Relationship Between Honeybee Population and Honey Production in Korea : A Historical Trend Analysis

The honey bee provides various ecosystem service as well as direct income source of beekeeping industry. The primary product from beekeeping is the honey which is defined as “the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature” In Korea, two species of honey bees are kept by beekeepers; Apis cerana and A. mellifera. There were four historical patterns of bee population found; phase I, A. cerana dominated but total hive numbers below 200,000 until 1950s, phase II, both species low below 500,000 until 1977, phase III, both species increasing with A. mellifera dominant until saturation of two million hives near 2005, and phase IV, A. mellifera dominating but A. cerana declining in 2010s. Patterns of national honey production were reflected by the hive population reaching 28,000 tons in 2009. Honey production per hive was 4kg in phase I, and 12.4kg during phase II-IV. If the numbers of A. mellifera colonies were considered, the productivity was 15kg per hive. Residual variation was higher in the recent years implying some other factors such as honey plant biology, pest and disease pressure could influence the honey yield which can be further studied.