On Saturday, March 1, 2025, a group of beekeepers from northern Serbia visited the beekeeping fair in Székesfehérvár, Hungary.
A more than interesting lecture was given by Peter Bross, president of the Hungarian Beekeepers’ Association, whom Serbian beekeepers have had the opportunity to listen to in several places in Serbia in recent years. The text before you was written based on the notes of the president of the Subotica Beekeepers’ Association, Dragoljub Matić, who personally attended the lecture.
At the lecture, Peter Bross first analyzed the development of beekeeping in Hungary from 1989 to the present. In short, despite the significant increase in the number of hives and beekeepers in this friendly neighboring country of ours (50-60%), Hungary has had its lowest exports to the rest of the EU in the last 10 years, around 14,500 tons. He said that this is strongly influenced by honey from China and Ukraine, but also by something else… Here is what they did. They sent a request to Chinese honey buyers in 32 provinces in China (mostly each one is larger than Hungary) with the aim of seeing what quantity of honey and at what price they could buy from them. Absolutely all of them quoted a price of $2 and above, BUT official EU data shows that honey from China was imported at an average price of €1.41, including all delivery costs, which are not small at all. It is obvious that this is a dumping price policy by the Chinese. He noted that this is real honey offered by the Chinese, not the honey imported into the EU! An initiative was launched to protect the EU market from such prices for such honey. The biggest opponents of this were the Germans, Italians and French, and here is why in his opinion. Germans, Italians, French… buy honey from domestic producers (honey purchased from domestic beekeepers reaches a price of 6-8 euros). The ultra-cheap honey imported from China is bought by the “poor” who do not respect anything of their own but only look for it to be as cheap as possible, or it is bought by foreigners and not residents of those countries. By introducing, for example, a tariff on imported honey from China, he believes that it would even harm domestic beekeepers in Germany, Italy, France and some other countries, by protecting beekeepers from Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and even Serbia if you like, because their honey is of much higher quality than Chinese honey and could endanger domestic consumers, and they don’t want that, they are protecting their own and letting beekeepers in other European countries manage on their own, it doesn’t matter if they are Hungarians, Romanians, Serbs… In general, by introducing tariffs, prices would jump for all beekeepers throughout Europe. The fight is of course continuing in Brussels, but he says that beekeepers shouldn’t get their hopes up too much. What is good in his opinion is that the EU is planning to significantly increase subsidies for beekeeping. Starting next year, Hungarian beekeepers will receive as much as 42 euros per hive.
By the way, from 1989 to today, they have raised the consumption of honey per capita from 200 g to 1 kg through marketing, and in this they had financial support from the state and the chamber of commerce.
As for the beekeeping, our beekeepers asked at the fair how the bees were beekeeping. Losses are generally up to 50%, the bees are weaker than they would like, and they cite drought and a lack of pollen as the reasons, which has affected the quality of bees in bee colonies.
When they asked the host how he thought he was fighting climate change this year, he said that he would make 150 more swarms than usual and that he would merge them with weaker colonies in the fall, and at the same time replace the queen. Those two swarms will certainly have more winter bees and brood in reserve than one colony. Unlike us in Serbia, at all the gatherings that Dragoljub attended, he saw that they were not talking about counterfeits, but about improving production and, above all, reducing costs in order to obtain the cheapest honey possible and thus fight against the low prices of honey in the purchase (acacia 3.0-3.3 euros per kilogram, rapeseed 1.5 euros and sunflower honey 1.75 euros). But there is no answer as to whether, with this price reduction, honey can be produced at 1.3 euros per kilogram, which is the price at which honey is currently imported from China to Europe, including all delivery costs. Every normal beekeeper knows that this is impossible, or rather as far from possible as our Sun is from the nearest star.
Agreed with published text: Peter Bross
