St.Lucia apiculture to make global export markets

Rashaed Esson

Staff Writer

#St.Lucia, June 5, 2023 – Saint Lucian beekeepers are on the brink of joining the honey export market with locally produced honey following final consultations  under the Bee City Cluster Projects, an initiative started in 2019 to enhance the production of the island’s honey to increase exports.

May 2023 marked the project’s final component, a knowledge exchange session, which comprised two objectives, assessing the apiaries, including the beekeeping practices and hive management, towards increasing their productive capacity; and  providing practical and theoretical training to the Ministry of Agriculture Apiculture extension officers. This was carried out by Christopher Davey, an international apiculture consultant, who joined officials of Export Saint Lucia and the Ministry of Agriculture for a series of site visits to beehives across the island.

“From my observations, there are a lot of little things that beekeepers can do to improve their production. The industry is very lucrative here in terms of the cost of honey, and this means that there is a big opportunity for younger people to enter the industry, double the number of hives in Saint Lucia, and subsequently double the amount of honey produced in Saint Lucia.”

The project, anticipated to foster significant growth in the island’s apiculture industry was implemented by Export Saint Lucia and it received funding from the Inter-Development Bank Compete Caribbean Partnership Facility.

In fact, the development of the project by Export Saint Lucia seems to be in accordance with its goal to increase the island’s exports as expressed by Sunita Daniel, the organization’s Chief Executive Officer who said, “The mandate of Export Saint Lucia is to increase exports, in some cases by creating the environment which will lead towards that goal. While we are aware of the high quality and high value of our honey, at this juncture, we are not producing enough to meet local and international demand. To do this and eventually service the export markets, we must increase, even double, production. This is why the knowledge exchange component of the project is critical.”

He further added that the organization wanted to make sure the “extension officers were equipped to advise the beekeepers and keep the momentum of the consultancy towards our final goal,” hence the assessing of ways to train the extension officers on everyday beekeeping best practices.

The Saint Lucian Government has seen the potential of the apiculture industry and so have, in the 2023/2024 budget estimate, has granted three hundred thousand dollars to facilitate its development as well as that of the sea moss industry.

This new development for Saint Lucia has an unavoidable chance of success, largely increasing the island’s export earnings as the value of the global apiculture market stands at US$10.3 billion as of 2022, and is projected to reach US$15.3 billion by 2032-end. Also, the global demand for apiculture products is estimated to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate at four percent through 2032.