The country makes less honey than it did 25 years ago. Back then we produced about 3,000 tons a year. Today we produce between 1,500 and 2,000 tons, but we import more than 3,000 tons every year, mostly from China. We hardly export any honey at all.The number of hives is also far too low for what farming needs. Official records counted about 161,000 managed hives in 2020, with estimates closer to 200,000 today. Experts say we would need around 1.8 million hives to properly pollinate all our major crops like sunflower, mango, avocado, oranges, apples and macadamias.The industry is made up of two groups.
There are only about 50 large commercial beekeepers who produce about 80 percent of all the local honey. Then there are almost 3,000 hobby and small-scale beekeepers who keep a few hives each. Less than five percent of beekeepers own the land where their bees live. The rest rely on deals with farmers, state land or nature reserves.So where are most bee farmers? The Western Cape is the clear capital. In national surveys it always has the most colonies. In one survey it had 23,157 colonies from just 87 beekeepers, far more than any other province. KwaZulu-Natal is second and the Eastern Cape is third. The reason is pollination.
The Western Cape grows more than 80 percent of South Africa's apples and pears in Elgin and Grabouw, and those orchards need bees every spring. From September to October beekeepers truck hives from the Overberg to the fruit farms. Without those bees, half the crop that is exported would not set fruit. In Mpumalanga and Limpopo you find many beekeepers working with macadamias, avocados and litchis. In the Free State and North West they follow sunflowers.Now the important question is what does it cost and what can you make?Starting is not cheap but it is manageable. A new hive with bees costs between R1,500 and R2,500. You also need protective clothing, a smoker, a hive tool and an extractor to spin honey. For 10 hives most new beekeepers budget R25,000 to R35,000 to get going. You also have to register as a beekeeper by law.
Scientists keen to dance with the honeybees and pick up their germs
There are two ways to earn money and they have very different profit margins.The first is pollination services. This is where the best margins are right now. According to the Western Cape Department of Agriculture enterprise budget updated in June 2024, 100 hives rented for pollination earned R90,000 for a three month season, which is R900 per hive. After costs for pest control, labour and transport, the total variable cost was only about R68 per hive. That left a margin of about R829 per hive. That is a margin of more than 90 percent on direct costs because the bees do the work themselves.The second is honey production.
The same department shows that 168 hives producing 2,520 kg of honey can earn R214,200 at R85 per kg. Costs are higher here because you must feed sugar in winter, pay for extraction at R5 per kg, and pay for transport to hives and harvest. The margin after all variable costs is around R72.57 per kg of honey, or about R182,800 for the 168 hives. Retail honey today sells for R120 to R180 per kg at markets, so if you bottle and sell yourself your margin is much better than selling in bulk at R55 to R85.Some investment companies that sell managed hives project an average profit of 10 to 12 percent per year over the life of a hive, with income twice a year from spring and summer harvests and pollination fees.The risks that eat your profit are real. Theft and vandalism are the biggest problem. Many beekeepers are leaving the industry because hives are stolen or burned.
One farmer reported losses of R350,000 in a single year. Lack of forage is the other problem. When eucalyptus trees are removed or veld is cleared, bees starve and you must spend more on sugar feeding. Pesticides and cheap imports also keep honey prices low.For the environment though, bee farming is priceless. One hive houses about 30,000 bees and those bees must visit two million flowers to make one jar of honey. Each visit pollinates crops and wild fynbos.
Without managed bees, South Africa would lose apples, pears, sunflowers, avocados, macadamias and much of its natural biodiversity. That is why more farmers are now planting cover crops and restoring indigenous plants to keep bees alive all year.
Honey Bees -
Small Insects With a Big Job- Honey bees are one of the most important insects in the world, and South Africa has its own special kinds.We have two indigenous subspecies. The Cape honey bee lives in the Western Cape and the African honey bee lives in the rest of the country. A single hive can house 20,000 to 60,000 bees. Most are worker bees, all female. There are a few hundred drones, which are male, and only one queen. The queen is the mother of the whole colony and can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day in summer.Worker bees only live for about six weeks in summer. In that short life one bee will visit thousands of flowers every day to collect nectar and pollen. Nectar is carried back to the hive and turned into honey. Honey is the bee's winter food. To make one 500g jar of honey, bees from one hive must visit about two million flowers and fly about 88,000 kilometres.Bees are not just honey makers. They are pollinators. When a bee lands on a flower, pollen sticks to its hairy body and is carried to the next flower. That is how most fruit, vegetables and wild plants make seeds and fruit. Apples, pears, avocados, macadamias, sunflowers, onions and watermelons all need bees. In South Africa, over 50 crops depend on honey bees.Bees talk to each other by dancing. If a scout bee finds good flowers, it goes back to the hive and does a waggle dance that tells the other bees exactly how far and in which direction to fly.Honey bees are in trouble. They lose food when trees and wild flowers are cleared, they are poisoned by pesticides, and their hives are stolen and vandalised. When bees disappear, our food disappears with them.Protecting bees is simple. Plant flowers that bloom in different seasons, avoid spraying poison when plants are flowering, and support local beekeepers by buying real local honey.
