Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Honey lovers rejoice! Traditional Honey Fair, displaying the sweetest honey varieties, will return to the capital this autumn.

The sweet tooth should not miss the chance to visit the month-long honey fair to take place at “A.M.A.Y Holdinq” Mall from October 10 to November 5 (address is Nobel avenue 23).

The fair is arranged with a view to creating a market for different types of honey, promoting honey farming and raising awareness about the benefits of honey.

Honey Fair, first held in 2009, is one of the largest fairs organized in the capital city, with hundreds of bee keepers offering their honey to guests of the event.

Beekeepers from all regions of Azerbaijan convene at the Fair, where every barrel of honey is thoroughly examined by specialists.

Guests will be able to taste and purchase a variety of honey flavors, including lime, meadow, acacia, crown of thorns, chestnut, sunflower, licorice flower, sweet clover, etc.

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.

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.

The government freed farmers engaged in apiculture from taxes until 2019, besides the land tax. Moreover, the government gives subsidies, preferential loans to the farmers to facilitate growth in the sector.

Beekeeping is rapidly developing in Shamakhi region of the country, where the number of bee families increased from 2,000 to 6,770. Thanks to these efforts, annually several tons of Shamakhi honey is exported to Baku and Sumgayit.

In the current season about 68 tons of honey was produced in the region, which is more by 7.7 tons compared to the previous year.

Beekeepers from Shamakhi will join the Baku Fair with 5 tonnes of honey.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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