Nigeria can earn $10bn from honey, hives – USAID official

David Musa, Team Leader, USAID Bee Keeping Pollination Project, has said Nigeria can earn over $10 billion revenue from local and international trade in honey and other hive products.

Musa who is also the Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Apiculture Platform said this while speaking on the sideline of a Capacity Building Workshop for bee farmers in Nasarawa State recently.
 
Bee keepers
He explained that even without industrial production, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals, the domestic consumption rate of honey in the country is currently 380,000 tonnes, with a global price of about $4.5 billion.

He added that efforts must be intensified towards getting honey export certification from the European Union to give credibility to the forthcoming largest Africa Apiculture Trade to be hosted by Nigeria in 2018.

‘‘Nigeria is going to host the largest bee keeping trade in Africa, which is the largest platform that will bring together many bee keeping enterprises. It will put Nigeria on the global bee keeping map. The EU certificate is one of the highest levels of certification and it is necessary to get that.”

Also speaking, Alhaji Mohammed Mahmud, a bee-farmer and participant at the workshop, commended the Federal Government and the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) for the workshop.

Mahmud, who is also the House Committee Chairman on Population and National Identity Card, assured that necessary legislation that would drive the bee farming industry would be looked into by the National Assembly.

He said that the Federal Government has made provision in the 2017 budget to establish standard laboratory to test hive products before exportation.

‘‘This programme is coming at the appropriate time because many people do not know about bee farming. The workshop has come to educate bee keepers like I, on the techniques, problems and prospects to move the industry and country forward.

‘‘The workshop has come out with the position of looking at all the existing laws that governs the bee industry. We want to look at it together and see what changes can be made to make the industry move forward. I want to assure you that we will do our best to make sure that necessary legislation for the bee industry will be taken care of.


‘‘Part of the problems that the industry has is trying to set up a laboratory where you can test the product that you want to export and this has been taken care of in the 2017 budget,’’ he said.

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