Key points:

Jamaican officials warn that imported honey could introduce dangerous bee diseases capable of devastating local apiaries.

The warning comes as local beekeepers struggle to recover from hurricane losses and ongoing honey shortages.

Consumers are being urged to report suspected illegal honey imports, which authorities say may bypass strict inspection requirements.

WHEN Jamaican honey disappears from supermarket shelves, imported brands typically help to fill the gap. But agricultural officials say those same bottles could carry diseases capable of wiping out the bees needed to restore local production.

“Most of the honey across the world is exposed to spores that our beekeeping industry does not necessarily have,” Hugh Smith, chief plant protection officer in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining’s Apiculture Unit, told the Jamaica Observer in an update on the apiary industry post-Hurricane Melissa.

The warning comes as local beekeepers struggle to recover from the storm, which wiped out an estimated 10,000 to 16,000 colonies and deepened shortages in a market where Jamaica has long failed to produce enough honey to satisfy demand.

“Jamaica has always been going through a period where the national demand surpassed the production point of the supply,” Smith said.

World Bank trade data show Jamaica officially imported roughly US$180,000 worth of natural honey in 2022, while exports in 2023 totalled just over US$46,000, highlighting the island’s continued dependence on imported supplies to help satisfy local demand.

But Smith suggested the volume of honey entering the island may extend beyond what is formally captured in trade records.

“When you look at honey coming into Jamaica, you will see that it is a small amount and that is what’s documented on the trade system,” he said. “What it also means is that we are finding much more honey than what is documented on the import side, and we are finding those on the shelves and that is of great concern to us.”

For consumers, the shortage is most noticeable late in the year, when locally produced honey becomes harder to find and imported brands occupy more shelf space. For regulators, however, those imports represent a potential pathway for diseases that could undo much of the work now under way to rebuild the sector.

One of the chief concerns is American foulbrood, a highly destructive bacterial disease that attacks developing bees and can spread rapidly through an apiary. Once a colony becomes infected, Smith said the standard response in many countries is drastic.

“If you get American foulbrood in your apiary, the treatment is basically to burn the colonies, because once the spores are there, they are very difficult to eliminate,” he told the Business Observer.

In some countries, beekeepers use antibiotics to suppress the disease. But Jamaica does not permit antibiotics in local beekeeping, which makes prevention the country’s most effective line of defence.

“If spores come in and there are no suppressors, which is antibiotics, then these spores will multiply to the point where they start affecting the health of bees,” Smith explained.

The financial consequences can be severe.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture’s 2024 Cost of Production Honey Report, a beekeeper operating 50 colonies can spend between approximately $931,000 and $1.53 million during a single honey cycle, depending on the region. The ministry estimates that production costs range from about $571 to $1,606 per kilogram. Since a 750-millilitre bottle is roughly equivalent to one kilogram, the figures help explain why authentic Jamaican honey often commands a premium price.

That means an outbreak requiring colonies to be destroyed could erase investments running into millions of dollars for even medium-sized operators.

Still, the risk does not end when the honey has been consumed.

“The minute the honey comes in, the containers must be disposed at some point. If they are sent to the dump yard, then bees are going to have access to these empty containers,” Smith said.

If local bees feed on residue left in discarded jars, they can carry contaminants back to their hives, creating a route for disease to spread through the wider bee population.

Alert the Ministry

Smith said consumers can play a direct role in protecting Jamaica’s bee industry by alerting the ministry to imported honey that may have entered the country without the required permits.

“We ask all beekeepers, all consumers, all persons who are in the market space, kindly check the honey that’s on these shelves to see if there is any imported honey,” he said. “If there is imported honey found, please take a picture and forward it to the Ministry, the Agriculture Unit, or directly to the Honey Research Station, and we will do our investigation.”

He added those investigations can lead to police action and confiscation.

“Investigation may lead to honey being confiscated by the police, because it may be considered as an item that came without any necessary permits.”

According to Smith, ministry officials working alongside the police have already removed imported honey from supermarket shelves and storage areas in parts of St Mary and St Ann.

“The last time we seized between St Ann and St Mary, we had probably about 60 kilograms of honey that would have been removed from a series of sales points or supermarkets,” he said.

He added that approximately 300 kilograms of confiscated honey collected over the past four to five years is currently being held in ministry storage pending approval for destruction.

“It has been taken out of the access of honeybees with requests that will be sent to the minister for permission to destroy such honey,” he added.

Some seizures, Smith noted, also take place at the ports of entry before the products reach store shelves.

The ministry is not only monitoring imported honey, but also beeswax, bee pollen, propolis and used beekeeping equipment, all of which can harbour harmful organisms.

Smith said concerns over mislabelled honey have also triggered regional efforts to develop a Caribbean honey authentication system dubbed the Regional Reference Database for Caribbean Honey, an initiative that represents both the innovation and protection of honey.

“So the intent is to have authentic regional honeys being documented, a database created so that any honey that is found and named according to a Caribbean island can be verified by matching it with that database,” he said.

The initiative comes amid growing concerns internationally about honey being repackaged or relabelled as originating from countries different from where it was actually produced.

“We have encountered across the world with the honey coming in as honey being traded on the world market as, say, a European honey, but it’s really a Chinese honey that has been mislabeled and taken from another country,” Smith said.

Importers are required to obtain permits, and products of bee origin are subjected to strict inspection before they are allowed into the country.