This season, Hungary has harvested the worst acacia honey crop in the last 2-3 decades. This was reported by Peter Bross, the president of the National Hungarian Beekeeping Association (OMME), according to agronews.ua.

He noted that Hungarian beekeepers were only able to start this season with 600-700 thousand bee colonies instead of the usual 1.2 million. Ticks are actively destroying bees in the country. Therefore, farmers are forced to leave a significant portion of bees for reproduction to preserve the population, which affects honey production.

At the same time, frosts in the first half of April caused significant damage to acacia trees. More than half of the approximately 500 thousand hectares of Hungarian acacia forests froze – mostly in the valleys and plains of the central mountains. The cold and rainy weather during flowering did not allow the plants to produce pollen. As a result, half of the country’s beekeepers were unable to obtain any honey by the end of May – neither acacia nor other flower honey.

A small amount of acacia honey was collected in some areas of western Hungary. Most other regions were left almost completely without acacia honey.

According to Peter Bross, the only hope left for beekeepers this year is the sunflower bloom: if this fails as well, the beekeeping industry will inevitably continue to suffer losses that have already accumulated over the past years.