Welcome to the forums.
How difficult is it for you to export your honey?
I understand Germany has some strict standards for their honey.
Sincerely,
Brendhan
Extremely difficult......and it's large exporters fault about that......and they have hives too....and produce some amount of honey too....
It's simple - single beekeeper can live very well with earnings from its yearly honey production if he can sell it to the very end user(consumer). As i said "single beekeeper can lie well", i mean all of my family, and the minimum amount of honey we need is 3-4 tons\yr.
But here is the problem - we can sell to the end honey user more than 2-2,5 tons during bee-inactive off-season(september-march), simply because year to year honey consumption gets lower and lower. And that's because large bee dealers flood our market with fake honey, and people slowly began to stop eating honey. And our bee traders have previously proven markets in West Europe, and didnt care about so called small beekeepers. If BG people didnt eat honey, we must sell to traders for price actually equal to sugar price - here 1 kilo sugar is 0,9 euro, they buy honey to 1 - 1,1 euro. Great deal, right?
And some beekeepers thinks - "If they lie me like that, i'll lie back" - and made honey mostly from sugar.
And thats why some thinks that our honey sometimes sucks.....sometimes they are right....but if it's real, it is used for cultivating Chiniese honey in W.Europe and Germany- BG traders export to Germany mostly....
So if we want to survive, must individually find markets outside BG, Greece maybe or Italy.....or we will be smashed by the dealers.....