Written By | Staff Writer
After a continental beekeeping symposium in Kampala, claims of 210,000 tonnes of honey sit beside export earnings of about US$2 million.
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Uganda Agriculture
In late August, more than 400 beekeepers, scientists and traders from 22 countries gathered at Hotel Africana in Kampala for the 4th Africa Regional Apimondia Symposium, held from 25 to 28 August under the theme "Beekeeping for Business and Livelihoods". Hosted by the Uganda National Apiculture Development Organisation (TUNADO), it featured 75 speakers and ran alongside National Honey Week. Its message, delivered by TUNADO executive director Dr Dickson Biryomumaisho, was ambitious: Uganda should "conquer the market beyond Africa" with honey, beeswax, propolis and other bee products.
Two months on, the sector's promoters are still working with figures that cannot all be true. That uncertainty is the most important story in Uganda's apiculture, because markets, lenders and food-safety regulators do not reward numbers they cannot check.
Three sets of figures
In March, ahead of the symposium, the Daily Monitor reported that Uganda produces about 210,000 tonnes of honey a year, involving some 1.2 million people and an estimated 16 million beehives. The same report cited honey exports of 80,000 tonnes, and beeswax exports of 1,500 tonnes worth US$10.5 million.
A few days later, New Vision quoted TUNADO as saying Uganda produces 24,000 tonnes of honey a year, plus 2,000 tonnes of beeswax, 50,000 litres of propolis tincture and 10 kg of bee venom, with combined sector earnings of Shs240 billion. And the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), as reported by Nile Post and MSME Africa, said honey exports earn "over US$2 million annually" in foreign exchange.
These cannot be reconciled. If Uganda exported 80,000 tonnes of honey for US$2 million, the average price would be about US$25 a tonne, a fraction of one cent per kilogram, when honey sells for thousands of dollars a tonne internationally. Even TUNADO's lower production figure of 24,000 tonnes is more than ten times the 2018 estimate in the Monitor, which, citing Ghent University researchers, said Uganda harvested only one per cent of a potential 500,000 tonnes, around 5,000 tonnes, and that natural honey exports earned about US$1.2 million a year. The Monitor's March report also contrasts the 210,000-tonne figure with a production of about 4,000 tonnes in 2023, which, if accurate, would imply a fifty-fold jump in a few years.
There may be explanations. Different sources may measure hive production, marketed honey, or total bee products, and some may mix tonnes with litres or confuse national potential with actual output. Whatever the cause, the sector currently has no agreed baseline. Without one, it is impossible to say whether exports are growing, whether farmers are getting a fair price, or whether the investment promised at the symposium is going to the right places.
The real constraint is trust in the product
The data problem matters because market access depends on proof. Uganda is licensed to export honey to the European Union, and Biryomumaisho credited the government's National Residue Monitoring Plan with allowing exports to Europe and beyond, according to New Vision on 27 August. But MAAIF commissioner Dr Anna Rose Ademun Okurut warned in March that "as we export more, the requirements for quality also increase", and that buyers may block shipments if tests detect unwanted chemicals. She said farmers need guidance on which chemicals are safe near bee colonies.
That risk is real for smallholders whose hives sit among coffee, banana and cereal farms that are sprayed with pesticides. At the symposium, Lawrance Tusimemohangi, MAAIF's commissioner for entomology, said the ministry is preparing a project to save bees, teaching farmers how to care for colonies, which equipment to use, how to protect bees from agrochemicals and how to reach premium markets. The project is at preparation stage, and no budget or start date has been reported.
Quality problems are older than the symposium. The 2018 Monitor report quoted Ghent University's Guy Smagghe calling for better training in beekeeping practice and disease control, and noted that traditional harvesting often destroys hives and kills colonies. TUNADO also said then that the sector lacked the support farmers in other crops receive, including tax waivers on hives, beeswax extractors and processing tanks. In March this year, TUNADO listed pests, diseases, changing weather, habitat loss, limited access to technology and an unstructured honey market as continuing challenges.
Bees as farm inputs, not just honey makers
The economic case for beekeeping does not rest on honey alone. Officials and TUNADO leaders have repeatedly linked bees to crop yields. According to Nile Post and MSME Africa, they credited intensified beekeeping in central Uganda, including the Greater Masaka Robusta areas, with higher coffee yields, and Ademun stressed the value of bees as pollinators of coffee, bananas and cereals. If those links are measured properly, pollination services could be worth more to Uganda than honey exports. No study quantifying that effect was cited in the reports reviewed, and the coffee-yield claim should be treated as a stated view rather than an established finding.
It also suggests why agrochemical rules and apiculture should be planned together. Uganda has been tightening controls on pesticide imports and sale this year, and the same chemicals that threaten public health can also kill colonies and contaminate honey, which risks export rejections. A farmer who loses hives to spraying loses both the honey and the pollination benefit.
Programmes and pilots
On the support side, there are concrete but small steps. Minister of State Bright Rwamirama said in March that beekeepers in 69 districts have been included in the World Bank-supported Uganda Climate Smart Agriculture Transformation Project, which will provide production and value-addition inputs. Ademun said government plans to recruit entomologists in all local governments. In Lira, according to the Cooperator News on 3 September, Dutch beekeeping specialist Annemieke Timmerman, a volunteer with the Netherlands-based non-profit PUM, said she is willing to train 2,000 beekeepers in northern Uganda after visiting Lira, Alebtong, Kitgum, Lamwo, Gulu and Kaberamaido. The Greater North Beekeeping Center, led by William Ocen, has about 200 members and wants to grow to 2,000, aiming at high-quality organic honey and export-ready standards.
Those initiatives address production skills, storage and quality, the same weaknesses Timmerman identified: storage, harvest-time handling, transport to markets and reaching farmers. They do not, by themselves, build the traceability, laboratory testing and market intelligence that export buyers demand.
What it means for farmers and the economy
For a smallholder, beekeeping is attractive because it needs little land, and the symposium's focus on propolis, beeswax and apitherapy points toward products with higher margins than raw honey. TUNADO's own figure of Shs240 billion in sector earnings, if reliable, would make apiculture a meaningful rural income source. But much of Uganda's honey is still exported raw, the Ecofin Agency noted in March, which limits the gains to farmers and the economy.
The sensible next steps are unglamorous. MAAIF, UBOS and TUNADO could agree a single set of definitions and publish one production and export series, building on the residue-monitoring system that already keeps the EU door open. Hive registration and batch tracing would give buyers the traceability they want and help farmers prove their honey is chemical-free. Training programmes, like the Dutch-supported one in the north, would be more effective if linked to buyers who commit to prices for certified honey.
The August symposium showed that Uganda has a story to tell, as Biryomumaisho put it, about sustainable, nature-based beekeeping. Whether buyers believe it will depend less on tasting sessions than on whether the country can say with confidence how much honey it makes, how much it sells, and what is in it.
