Let’s honour the busy bee

While Indians celebrated Independence Day on August 15, the Americans celebrated the third Saturday of August, which fell on August 15 this year, as a National Honey Bee Day. Honeybees, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, play the quiet role of pollinators, and are responsible for almost one-third of crop output globally, enhancing the yields of 87 out of 115 leading food crops. Moreover, they add to nutritional quality. If India has to make its agriculture productive and nutritious, bees must be treated as farmers’ best friends. As you pass by the mustard fields of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan or the apple orchards of Himachal Pradesh, you would realise what bees can do. They have helped India become the second-largest producer of honey in the world, after China, and third-largest exporter of honey after China and New Zealand in value terms.

Beyond pollination, they have also helped farmers augment incomes through apiculture (honey bee farming). India’s honey production has nearly doubled over the last decade, from about 76,000 tonnes in 2013-14 to roughly 151,000 tonnes in 2025-26, signalling scale in supply and capacity. Almost 70% of the honey produced is exported ($208 million in 2025-26), and India accounts for around 8.4% of global honey exports. However, India’s export basket remains highly concentrated — the US absorbed about 76% of India’s exports ($157.8 million) in 2025-26. And that runs a concentration risk in India’s export markets, a taste of which was felt when the US suddenly imposed high tariffs on Indian imports. It was a big blow to Indian honey exporters and farmers, but the turnaround was also very swift in terms of diversifying export markets.

India’s response was pragmatic. Shipments to countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Israel have begun, reflecting a shift towards markets that value natural, sustainably-sourced honey. At the same time, EU consumers are willing to pay a premium for traceable and environmentally responsible products, traits that India’s multifloral and organic honey varieties can uniquely offer.

However, India’s domestic market remains limited despite a large population. India’s per capita honey consumption remains low (about 37 gm per year), indicating that a huge market is yet to be tapped. As more awareness about its health benefits spreads and retail penetration improves, a domestic market can help stabilise producer incomes while supporting premium quality exports.

This diversification mirrors a classic economic lesson — trade barriers often compel resilience and innovation. Rather than being confined to a single large buyer, India’s honey sector is now spreading its wings across geographies. However, unit value realisation remains a constraint — Indian honey’s unit value is about $1,858 per tonne, well below the world average and far from premium categories like New Zealand’s Manuka. Upgrading quality, traceability, and branding is therefore essential. Price realisation can improve if exports are in branded retail packs rather than wholesale unbranded volumes.

Reforms and investments will determine if this moment becomes a structural transformation or a temporary reprieve. At the same time, investment in nuclear magnetic resonance-capable testing labs, cluster-based processing, GI branding for unique floral honeys (Sundarbans, Ramban Sulai), and setting up farmer producer organisations will lower compliance costs and enable entry into the premium European, Japanese, and East Asian markets. The bee product market (beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, pollen) is sizeable, valued at roughly $12.7 billion in 2023 and projected to grow, offering India a high-margin diversification route beyond bulk honey.

Crucially, sustainability must be central. Scientific beekeeping, pesticide management, and support for pollination services will protect both yields and ecosystem services that agriculture depends on. Initiatives under the National Beekeeping and Honey Mission and the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority’s export support are steps in the right direction, but scaling them requires sharper targeting, labs, cluster grants, export promotion, and large-scale consumer campaigns (“Honey for Health”) to grow domestic demand.

The Indian honey economy stands at a crucial juncture. The trade, once tethered to a single overseas market, needs to remodel itself as a global source of sustainable, premium honey. This requires the right blend of policy reform, quality assurance, and branding. Only then scale can be converted into genuine value, turning millions of hives into durable rural livelihoods. To mean anything beyond a date, the National Honey Bee Day should remind us that the jar on the shelf is the smallest part of the story. Every rupee of honey we export rests on a far larger, unpriced service — the pollination that fills the orchard, the oilseed field, and the vegetable plot, and quietly underwrites the food on our plates. The real measure of India’s sweet revolution, then, will not be how much honey we sell, but whether we learn to protect the tiny worker that makes both the honey and the harvest possible.

Can our policymakers prioritise these silent workers that pollinate our crops and enhance rural prosperity? Can they set a time-bound target of doubling honey bee colonies by 2030, and double our share in the global market? As things stand, the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision is too distant and vague to assess its seriousness.