Chinese honey factoids

In an article in Food Production Daily about the EU lifting of the Chinese honey ban comes a number of interesting factoids:

before the ban Chinese honey accounted for 40% of the UK's honey imports

China's slice of the international market is also about 40%

the next biggest producers are the USA, Argentina and the Ukraine

although Chinese production is still rising the number of bee colonies has declined in the past few years from a high of 6.5 million to around 5.7 million in 2001

officially the Chinese government has not financially supported honey producers since 1978. However, some provincial level support is available to boost the industry and income from the sale of honey, honey products and queen bees is all tax free.

And if you like this sort of thing, there's a very detailed and new market analysis of Chinese honey available for $512.