· Tanzania is home to 600 billion Bees at the rate of ten bees per every person in the country.
· Country produces an average of 35,000 tons of honey per year
· Bee Parks cover 40,000 hectares of the forested land in Tanzania
Arusha, January 2025.
As Tanzania braces to host the Fiftieth International Apicultural Congress, the Apimondia.
Meanwhile the country’s Northern City of Arusha where the event will be held in September 2027 is hanging more than two million beehives on local tree branches.
Arusha City Mayor, Maximillian Iranghe together with the President of the Apimondia Regional Commission for Africa, David Mukomana recently took part in the distribution of the new beehives to the youth groups in the precinct as prelude to the 50th International Apiculture event.
A total of 120,000 young people were placed in charge of the 2 million beehives to form a new honey churning industry in Arusha.
Through the setup, according to the organizers, the youth can gain experience and come up with their own special agenda to be tabled during the forthcoming Apimondia Congress.
“These beehives will be placed on trees along all river banks, local forest reserves and other designated open spaces for the purpose of creating awareness on the importance of bees and apiculture in society,” explained Mayor Iranghe.
The beehives were procured from the Tanzania Forestry Services and during the period towards the global conference, they will serve as training grounds and have something to showcase to the delegates in 2027.
The Beehives were handed over to recipients at the climax of the recently held racing event called ‘Nyuki Marathon,’ which was organized to create awareness on the importance of apiculture as well as promoting the anticipated Apimondia 2027 event.
Apimondia Mon Cher
It seems like the country is riding on the Apimondia vehicle in creating a new agenda of initiating its youthful population into apiculture.
Tanzania has already succeeded in convincing the young population to undertake horticulture, the more interesting and faster yielding segment of agriculture.
Apimondia the global apiculture congress which comes to Arusha around September 2027, will boost beekeeping sector in the country.
The meeting is set to bring into East Africa more than 6000 delegates from around the world.
“It will be the second time that the Apimondia conference is held on the African Continent, after the inaugural event which took place in South Africa back in 2001,” said the President of the Apimondia Regional Commission for Africa, David Mukomana.
Mukomana said they were hoping that the Apimondia congress will create a platform of transforming beekeeping in Africa into a more profitable venture for exports and youth employment.
Boasting nearly 10 million bee colonies, in the country’s forest reserves, Tanzania can easily outfit an army made of the live stinging drones, large enough to bring down any empire.
However, the country is making a much more profitable use of the bee colonies, churning out 35,000 tons of honey every year; at least, this is according to the Tanzania Forest Services Agency (TFS).
The Conservation Commissioner of Tanzania Forest Services Agency, Professor Dos Santos Silayo revealed that the country is currently estimated to have a total of 9.2 million bee colonies.
He adds that if tapped well, Dar will potentially be able to produce an average of 135,000 tons of honey.
Over 600 billion bees. That’s how many?
A bee colony is usually made up of a single queen, hundreds of male drones and up to 70,000 female worker bees. Each honeybee colony also consists of developing eggs, larvae and pupae.
It therefore means Tanzania has more than 600 billion bees swarming across the country’s landscape, sucking nectar from flowers and milling honey.
That boils down to ten bees per person in Tanzania.
The Tanzania Forestry Agency is in charge of more than 20 bee parks in the country covering a total of 39,444 hectares of forested land.
And with nearly 35,000 tons of honey in stake, the Tanzania Forest Services (TFS) has introduced a special digital system for monitoring and improving the quality of bee products in the country.
Known as ‘Honey Traceability System ‘ which is a cloud-connected system for tracking, measuring and grading the quality of honey, starting from the bee hive, honey-comb to the final market destination.
To reinforce the apiculture sector, the forest agency has also managed to establish three major bee farms, according to the Tanzania Forests Services’ Commissioner of Conservation.
The new farms include the Kipembawe Bee Farm, measuring 20,728 hectares, and the Mwambao Bee farm of Handeni in Tanga and the Kondoa-Manyoni Farm, where a total of 14 new apiaries have been introduced.
The TFS agency has also built honey processing plants in the four districts of Mlele, Kibondo, Sikonge, and Bukombe.
These facilities have been installed with the ultra-modern processing machines.
Tanzania Forestry Services Agency has on the other hand, been working to disseminate proper knowledge to local beekeepers through training and so far, more than 1,998 farmers from 40 villages have been trained.
But how good is Tanzanian Honey?
The TFS recently collected a total of 70 samples of Natural Honey from 34 districts in the country.
The honey samples were then dispatched to Germany for quality testing.
The International Laboratory brought back results indicating that the quality of the organic honey being produced from Tanzanian farms was at 96 percent of the required DIN and International Standards.
Honey produced from Tabora region, on the other hand, was declared the second best in terms of quality, on the African continent.
While China, Poland and countries in the European Union (EU) are the major buyers of honey from Tanzania, the country also exports honey and beeswax to Germany, France, Belgium and Netherlands, Oman, USA, Japan, Botswana, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Congo DRC, Somali and Kenya.
Tanzania ranks at number 14 as far as the leading beekeeping countries in the world are concerned with the country taking the second position in Africa after Ethiopia.
The Chief Executive Officer of Worker Bees Africa, Restituta Lopes Lazarus says there is an increasing demand of honey and other bee products overseas and with proper handling, Africa can be the region to supply the needs.
“This is a budding industry which provides a potential economic sector for Africa as well as ensuring employment to the continent’s mostly youthful population,” stated Ms Lazarus.