DOHA: Qatar’s experiment with commercial beekeeping has proved to be a success with the 30 bee farms the environment ministry helped set up some time ago reporting good progress.
Each farm has 10 hives, and plans are afoot to help entrepreneurs to set up 20 more bee farms. There are two seasons for collecting honey in Qatar and other GCC countries. One is in June and the other in October.
The October season is considered to be of much importance since this is time when sidr, the deciduous shrub, swarm all over in the northern areas of the country.
All these 30 farms are located in areas where the shrubs mushroom in this season and bees eat nectar and pollen from them. A kilogramme of sidr honey can sell for as much as $150 a kg. Sidr honey has tremendous medicinal value and is popular as an aphrodisiac.
The bee farming business is gaining ground in the country, Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported on Saturday. The 30 farms have produced about 900 kilogrammes of honey in the second season. In the first season last June these farms produced some 670kg, QNA said.
The first fruit of apiculture that began this year, was plucked in the second week of October. An average collection of the honey was about 3.5 kilogramme per hive that is very close to the expected average production of four kilogramme from a hive. The production of phase-1 last June covered 67 percent of total cost of inputs of these farms signaling success of the project, said QNA.
The second harvest began at the end of October and it is expected to increase the collection to about 900kg. The source of honey for second season is nectar of Al Sidr bosoms that is considered the best quality and it has huge demands in the local market.
Since Al Sidr honey is expensive, it is expected to generate more revenue compared to the previous season. The Peninsula
