Exports of Ukrainian honey will decrease by 10-20% this year
Honey is in question: еxpensive fuel and curfews make season difficult for nomadic apiaries
09 May 2026, 06:18 2453
The past season was not easy for Zaporizhzhia beekeepers — due to weather conditions, honey harvests were much weaker than usual. Accordingly, the price of honey was quite high due to its shortage.
This year, the market situation will depend on the weather: if the season is favorable for bees, honey prices may remain at the level of last year. If not, a shortage of honey, rising fuel prices for nomadic apiaries, and rising prices for wood for frames may push the cost of products up again.
Viktoria Zhdan, a beekeeper and owner of the Tviy Med brand, told this during a live broadcast on Instagram.
The honey story of the Zhdanov family from Zaporizhzhia Oblast began 15 years ago with an unusual gift — a single hive of bees. «The hive was given to my husband by his uncle. And since gifts are not returned, he had to deal with the bees», — says Victoria.
First it was a hobby, but later one hive turned into five, then ten, twenty, and fifty. This is how the farm grew to a hundred hives, which are located on their own land plot in the village of Novoslobidka.
The apiary operates in the format of nomadic beekeeping. Bees are transported between sunflower fields in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions. The Zhdanovs cooperate with farmers who sow the right varieties and help with placement — 2—3 hives are needed to pollinate 1 hectare.
Since the apiary is located in the frontline region, there are restrictions on the transportation of bees. While they used to be able to make several trips a night, now they can only make one because of the curfew. «We have only two hours to transport the bees. We start moving at about 22:00, and at 00:00, the curfew starts», — the entrepreneur says.
But it was the full-scale invasion that prompted Victoria to partially switch from selling honey to processing it. I realized that I wouldn«t be able to go to work, schools and kindergartens were online, so I needed to change something to work not only during the season but all year round. That's when we started cremating honey and created Tviy Med brand. Later, we were invited to an exhibition, prepared, and in two weeks we were already in Kyiv with our branded products. After that, we started to develop as a brand», — the beekeeper recalls.
She cremates all the pumped honey and pours it into food cans, and when there is an order for a certain flavor, she takes it and forms it.
The range includes 7 types of cream-honey: ginger-lemon, raspberry, mint, blueberry, sea buckthorn, chocolate, and cinnamon. The latter is for those who drink cinnamon coffee. Ginger with lemon, mint, and raspberry remain the most popular flavors. The plans are to expand the range with a combination of mint and lemon, as well as add such flavors as cappuccino and snickers. During the season, the apiary sells about 200 liters of cream honey.
The main sales are through coffee shops, craft stores, and social media. They also make gift sets, which consumers actively buy for the holidays. The next direction they want to take is making candles from wax.
Victoria notes that cream honey is more popular in autumn and winter, while in spring and summer people want fresh honey. The Zhdans sold fresh sunflower honey for 150 UAH per liter, and May honey for 350 UAH. In a good season, they can collect 40-60 kg from one hive.
«This winter was very favorable for bees, there were no temperature drops, and they overwintered well — 90% of the insects came out of winter. But the spring is cold. Rapeseed bloomed, but almost no nectar was produced, so there will be virtually no early honey in the region. It's the same with fruit trees. Now we are waiting for acacia and hope that it will be warm and humid, because this is the key to nectar production» — explains the entrepreneur.
Ivanna Panasiuk, AgroPortal.ua
