Beekeeping in España

This November, I had the opportunity to attend Spain's annual Honey Conference, held this year in province of Cordoba in Southern Spain. I was able to meet a number of Spainish, Italian and French beekeepers. Spain has a long and illustrious beekeeping history. Mesolithic peoples between 3000 and 8000 years ago were illustrating their craft on cave walls. To the present day, beekeeping has played an important part in Spain's agricultural history. Today, every aspect of beekeeping is carried out. Some of the beekeeping operations are recognized as amongst the most modern in the world, whilst others, with beekeepers using cork hives, produce honey 'para la casa' or 'for the house', rank amongst the most primitive. Statistics usually bore, confuse and can even lie, but I make no apologies for including some, simply to give a picture of the apicultural makeup of Spain.

There are about 2,4264601 hives in Spain, of which around 67% are in the hands of professionals and semi-professionals. There are probably more, but perhaps tax considerations play a part in reducing the true figures somewhat (See above about statistics). Purely professional beekeepers form a small percentage of the total, whereas for the rest, beekeeping supplements other occupations, mainly agriculture. Of the professionals it is estimated that 60% are migratory and 'follow the bloom'. Total honey production stands at some 30,000 metric tons per year and the most common honeys are multifloral or 'milflores' (thousand flowers). The most important single source varieties come from sunflowers, followed some way behind by citrus fruits (mainly orange), rosemary, thyme and heathers. Europe is the largest buyer of honey in the world and most of the honey that is exported from Spain goes to other European Community countries, the foremost of which is Germany, followed by the UK, France and Italy. Despite this, Spain remains an importer of honey and most of this comes from Argentina, China and Cuba.