Azernews.Az

By Aygul Salmanova

Widespread in the mountainous regions of the country and adored for the nutritional and remedial qualities of honey, apiculture is a rapidly developing sector of the Azerbaijani economy.

As the further development of non-oil sector remains as one of the main priorities for the country, aside the other agricultural products, the export of apicultural products are included in the agenda of the country.

Although the country doesn't produce enough honey of its natural potential, the government considers export opportunities. Among the importers of the Azerbaijani honey Japan and Arab countries are worth to mention.

Japan is the first country importing Azerbaijani apicultural products, which enjoy the national delicious product for the past three years. Although honey is a kitchen staple in Japan as in many other countries, most of the honey is imported, and even the domestic honey is largely produced using European honeybees.

Last year Azerbaijan produced 3,000 tones of honey, six tons of which was exported to the Japanese market. The taste of Azerbaijani honey did not leave the Japanese indifferent, so they returned again for the same taste.

Recently Japanese businessmen, who arrived in Azerbaijan to attend the Japanese Expo-2017 exhibition, participated at the Baku Honey Fair in Baku, where they were agreed to export apicultural products through the Japanese company Gross Border Club.

Every year Azerbaijan holds Honey Fair in the capital to widely promote apiculture and to attract farmers to this field. Today, the number of beekeepers ranges from 8,000 to 10,000 in the country,while there is a potential for the number of bee families in the country to reach 700,000.

Currently honey is being exported to Europe only in the framework of various exhibitions, where it is presented to potential consumers as a part of export missions. The Azerbaijani officials took part in two export missions within promotion of "Made in Azerbaijan" brand with the aim to study demand for Azerbaijani honey in Dubai and German markets. As a result, the country has received an order on honey export to Dubai.

In 2015, as much as 3.6 tonnes of honey were exported to foreign countries, which may be considered as the highest volume.

Experts believe although natural honey has export potential in Azerbaijan, there are serious problems associated with its export, among which high prices and insufficient volumes are the most significant ones.

According to the "Special Law on Apiculture", the main goals of the development of this field are increasing the productivity of beekeeping facilities, improvement in the quality of industrial processing and integration of the latest technologies in packaging and labeling.

It is noteworthy that the Azerbaijani 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 this sector. To support the development of beekeeping, about 400 entrepreneurs received over 4.7 million manat of soft loans this year.

The competitiveness of domestic honey is high because of its high quality. The fact is that Azerbaijan has a favorable climate and plants produce dense, high-quality nectar. In addition, the country stretches from the north-west to the south-east spurs of the Caucasian ridges, in which there are valleys, where a lot of honey plants grow.

The country is home to one of 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 the nectar.

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