Baku gives residents chance to buy natural honey
By Amina Nazarli
Sweet tooth should not miss the chance to visit the month-long honey fair in Baku.
Farmers from the country’s many honey-producing regions have gathered in the capital’s Nizami Street 92 since October 10 to put their various sweet and high-quality honeys on display.
The fair, which will run until November 10, features 250 tons of honey products from 380 producers.
With its great taste and countless benefits, honey has been used all around the world, over the past 2,500 years.
Widespread in the mountainous regions and adored for the nutritional and therapeutic qualities of honey, apiculture is a rapidly developing sector of the Azerbaijani economy. Domestically produced honey is renowned for its high quality and unique taste.
For the last 10 years, the number of bee families increased 2.4 times in the country. Some 438,000 bee families existed in Azerbaijan in 2014.
Deputy Agriculture Minister Seyfeddin Talibov attended the fair
to get acquainted with conditions there.
Talibov said that the traditional fair is held in Baku annually and
has piqued the interest of the population. It aims to promote the
apiculture industry in the country, as well as to look for ways to
export national bee products abroad.
This year, the Ministry strengthened control over the industry
in order to avoid shortcomings that the fair experienced last year,
as well as to ensure the population with high quality products.
For this, the Ministry has created a registration system and formed
an information base of bee producers operating in the country.
All the products featuring at the fair have been sent to the
laboratory for analysis. During the analysis, it was revealed that
honey of some five producers had poor quality, due to which they
were disqualified.
For security, the ministry also installed observation cameras in
the storehouse and in the hall where the products are put on
display.
Azerbaijan produces a variety of honey flavors: lime, meadow,
acacia, crown of thorns, chestnut, sunflower, licorice flower,
sweet clover, etc.
The country is home to one the most famous bee species in the world – the Mountain Grey Caucasian Bee – which can fly at 6 degrees below zero C and has the longest proboscis for sucking up nectar.
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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on
Twitter: @amina_nazarli
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