It was said in the past, whoever goes in search of pure honey he is expected to be stung by bees, the same situation is in the present. In past pure honey was directly collected from beehives whereas in present, we have to go to markets to get pure honey, but still we get stung.
Honey which is said to be a natural food product and a gift of Allah. No mankind process is used in producing it, it is only produced by a natural process.
In Saudi Arabia, a lot of honey is produced throughout the year and the world’s longest honey season is also held in the Kingdom that lasts for 11 months. People of the Kingdom love to eat honey.
The best types of honey bees are found in Madina but unfortunately, they are getting extinct. The president of Makkah beekeeper society, Khalid Al-Matrafi said the consumers of honey should be aware of bee-stung who go to the market to get pure honey.
It means the consumers nowadays are stung by the honey sellers who sell them fake honey in the form of pure honey. In Saudi Arabia, the production of honey has declined to 800 ton yearly as compared to the year 2007, it was 9,000 tons that year.
The annual demand for honey rose to 22,000 tons and to fulfill this demand, honey was imported from foreign countries and somehow contaminated honey got its way to get sold by the vendor.
There were about 20,000 beehives in 1986 which later jumped to 1 million in 2007 when the annual production reached to 9,000 tons and after that, the honey industry started to bear its failure, and the number of beehives declined to 300,000 and the annual production to 800 tons.
To make a stand for the industry foreign bees were imported which too became the main reason for the decline in the industry. The import of honey exceeded to 21,000 tons in 2016.
About 700,000 hybrid beehives were imported but the sad thing is that each one of these beehives could produce only 1 kg honey, thus impure honey became a thing to be sold by some bad sources they tried to deceive people.
Sometimes the pure honey is not pure the reason behind its impurity is its exposure to direct sunlight or it is not stored properly or it is collected in contaminated jars. Such honey is very harmful to human health. Sometimes the sugar syrup is sold in the name of honey.
Al-Matrafi said the apiculturist (honey farmers or beekeepers) sometimes feed the bees with sugar or Chinese honey. Sometimes they use artificial enzyme feeding method to enhance the production of honey. This cause the pure honey impure.
Al-Matrafi warned about fake honey and said to buy honey from authorized shops or reliable source rather than buying it from unauthorized dealers or street vendor.
Nobody is aware of its production and none have any clear data about the honey production sold by unauthorized dealers and they might end up selling you fake or impure honey.
Al-Matrafi was worried that the sector was unable to progress due to present conditions created by imported bees and he advised the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture, and Water to create a suitable environment for beekeeping and raise the number of beehives in order to maintain the production levels.
The ministry helped the bee farmers financially but unfortunately, they said it is difficult to take a proper stand because their bees are destroyed by the foreign bees.
Source: Saudi Gazette
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