Today, Zambian honey is highly marketable across the world, where it exports 55% of its honey to the United Kingdom and 35% to Germany, Arab countries, the USA and SADC region, and Programme Against Malnutrition (PAM), with more than $800,000 annually from honey exportation.

According to the Zambia honey sector strategy, in 2015 Zambia had an estimated 20000 beekeepers throughout the country producing an average of 600 metric tons of marketed honey yearly. Beekeeping provides up to 25% of the Annual income for

hundreds of thousands of Zambians.

Zambian honey has got even local buyers for example Greenbelt enterprises located in

Kasama, Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) located in Chinsali in Northern Province of Zambia offers a huge market

for Zambian honey to local people.

Minding the fact that Zambia and many other African countries in general still face

several challenges based on; knowledge transfer, access to capital, quality control,

logistics and so many others, Today, the production level of honey and other related

products, seems to be generally low which offers a huge opportunity on the other hand for both local and international investors.

This goes with the fact that the price of honey in most of African countries is high for one kilogram costing $6-8, almost 6 to 8 times the price of petrol and the fact that honey’s market is very high worldwide.

Many studies have shown that apiculture plays an important role in the economic growth of Zambia, since the majority of Zambians do beekeeping and honey exportation.

The government of Zambia encourages beekeepers to unite and work together  rather than working individually in order to help themselves and pull thousands of people out of poverty. The government has also adopted a beekeeping industry policy where different institutions that produce and export Zambian honey will be supported.

Different projects aimed at helping beekeepers are supported by government or other International Organizations such as The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that recently trained  almost  3000 honey farmers about technics of harvest and packaging bee products for export in order for farmers to make use of new export opportunities such as “New Trade Initiatives” of the european union, Us-backed African growth.

Beekeeping is a huge industry that offers a lot of job opportunities to different people

in different parts of the world due to the use and benefits of bee products such as

honey consumed as food, used in medicine and many other uses, and beeswax used as raw materials in cosmetics-skin care and hair products. Beeswax can also be used to make candles, floor polish, furniture polish and shoe polish. It can also be used to make sculptures and for baiting beehives.

Following the Agricultural Revolution, history reveals that about 10,000 years ago, people collected honey from wild bees (honey hunting) hence using and consuming bee products. Traditionally, people did beekeeping around 4000 years ago, and later on,

beekeeping became one of human activities especially in Africa and Asia, and has

become one of the most important business industries in the entire world according to Yuval Noah Harari, the author of a book named “Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind”.