Unstable weather conditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina have a bad effect on beekeeping, but beekeepers believe that all is not lost. For them, this is a challenging period, but as they say, you should not lose heart, you should keep the bees vital, and they will certainly reward you for your effort and work.
The President of the Association of Beekeepers of RS, Damir Barašin, says in a statement to Fena news agency that the rainy and unstable weather in the last month and a half has a bad effect on the yields in beekeeping, which have failed.
“We can freely treat it as a natural disaster. It’s not just that the beekeepers will be left without the yields they were counting on, but in these weather conditions it’s difficult to keep the bees vital, healthy and in good condition. They simply don’t have enough nectar and food to develop and be ready for the next pasture. The period behind us was challenging in terms of yield and keeping the bees in good condition,” he said.
He hopes for better weather conditions, but according to forecasts, the weather will not stabilize for the next ten days.
However, Barašin believes that bees, together with beekeepers, will overcome this situation.
According to him, in Bosnia and Herzegovina entity Republika Srpska has more than 250,000 beehives, about 150,000 are in the incentive system of the RS Ministry of Agriculture. So far, all beekeepers who have 50 or more hives have been included in this incentive system. From this year, he says, beekeepers with 30 or more hives are covered by that incentive.
As he said, this year those incentives will be a record and amount to one million and five hundred thousand BAM. In addition, beekeepers can also apply for capital investments from the RS Ministry of Agriculture. And many local communities, he says, help beekeepers.
“These are not big incentives, but they are useful for beekeepers to overcome crises like the current one, to help themselves until the next bee grazing,” he emphasized.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina entity Republika Srpska has a Law on beekeeping. They also received amendments to that law, which, as Barašin said, adapted it to European standards.
And the president of the Federation of FBiH Beekeepers, Rehad Deljo, points out that the current weather conditions have a bad effect on beekeeping, but also on agriculture as a whole. The honey production process is a system and beekeepers are hoping for better weather and better yields. He says, however, that it was not a wasted year. Beekeepers always hope, “beekeeping is a process, it’s an art”.
“Not a wasted year. We hope, but they need more help from various levels of government, both beekeepers and bees, and bees will reciprocate with love and greater yields,” he emphasized.
As he reminded, there were significantly smaller winter losses in beekeeping. They expected one of the more successful years, although, as he said, experienced beekeepers and experts in that field do not like to give analyzes for one beekeeping year.
“A ten-year period is taken, and we know from experience that one or two of those ten years will be extremely bad years. We hope that it will not be this year,” he said.
He specifies that, according to the results and yields, one or two years will be extremely honey-bearing and fruitful beekeeping years. The remaining seven or eight years will be average, depending on the technology of beekeeping, the knowledge of beekeepers, bee diseases and other factors that affect the development of beekeeping.
As he emphasizes, the entire process in nature shifted in about fifteen days, it can be seen by the swarming of bees and by some other indicators, but he adds that this is not a problem only here, the situation is similar, as he says, in neighboring countries.
When asked about support for beekeepers, Deljo recalls that he came to the position of president of the Association of Beekeepers when there were no incentives in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and now a lot has been achieved, although they are not completely satisfied.
“Society must invest in more detail and systematically and give a chance to beekeeping. In addition to honey, there is also pollen, propyl, production of bee swarms and queen bees, and more. People deal with it, that’s good, it should be connected with tourism,” he said.
The president of the Federation of FBiH beekeepers, Rehad Deljo, says that 220,000 beehives are registered in the FBiH. He thinks that the hive has about 400,000 because he knows from experience that beekeepers who have 20 or more hives apply for the incentive. Some of the local communities in the FBiH reduced it to ten to 15 beehives.
“That is a respectable number, it should be preserved, expanded and given a chance through a better incentive. We have a tradition in beekeeping, we just need to keep investing. BH honey is of high quality and recognized in the world,” he said.
In the Federation of BiH, the Rulebook on beekeeping from 2018 is in force, and in 2019, the register of beekeepers and apiaries was adopted. About 4,500 to 5,000 people are actively engaged in beekeeping.
