Honey business at risk (Summary)

BEEKEEPING is a lucrative business in Pakistan. Each beekeeper here

produces three times more honey than their European counterparts,
although a majority of these beekeepers belong to the rural region with a
low literacy rate, suffering heavily from ravages of the war on terror.
Honeybee flora, found throughout the Northern areas, FATA and AJK, can
potentially support 1m honeybee colonies. This region is important for the
honey agro-food chain including beekeepers, honey extraction plants,
buyers, traders, exporters and carriers.
Although beekeeping has become an increasingly professional activity in
recent years, this industry remains poorly documented in the country. In a
preliminary study AFB (American foul brood) infections were observed in
bees - the most serious bacterial disease of the honeybee brood.
The prevalence of AFB was found to be uniformly distributed in all the
districts indicating a 37.30pc incidence. It is suggested that beekeepers
should maintain hospital yards in which they group AFB colonies together
in isolated places for proper treatment. Such yards reservoirs of disease
serve to contaminate apiaries for miles around.
he International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences at the
University of Karachi, and the Biological Science laboratories at Gomal
University D.I. Khan used traditional and molecular techniques while
exploring the honeybee digestive system for bacterial flora.
It was observed that a considerable number of bee gut flora contributed to
human and insects pathogenic bacteria, for example, Shigella, Salmonella,
Enterococcus, Staphylococcus. The finding of vertebrate pathogenic
bacteria from bee-guts is quite alarming.
Presence of the pathogenic bacteria is most likely to contaminate honey
and other by-products of honeybees. Although honey is an antibacterial
agent, overload of pathogenic microbes may produce serious threat to
public health. It can be assumed that the consumption of honey
contaminated with pathogenic bacteria will pose a major health risk to
human beings. Furthermore, the health status of honeybees with
reference to the AFB bacterial isolates are being deeply investigated.
Majority of beekeepers are ignorant of the proper treatments and
management of bee colonies. If they are given awareness about the
proper use of antibiotic, sterilisations of hive tools and incineration of
infected colonies, the honey production will increase.
Pakistans bee flora can potentially support to colonise twice more than
the existing bee farms. Bee inspectors should be appointed for
observations of fatal bee diseases. Every bee farm should be registered

and their honey should not be commercialised inside the country, or

exported before prior licensing and quality assurance certificate by the
authority labs