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ABSTRACT

Much of the honey sold in Italy, as in the rest of Europe, comes from abroad, especially from Argentina and Hungary, where it can be produced at lower costs. Italian producers have higher production costs, mainly related to labour. It could therefore be interesting to analyze the results obtained from different types of beekeepers, in order to understand their economic results and to identify any possible opportunities for improvement, with the aim of verifying the reproducibility of these results. In this frame, we have considered the introduction of pollination service and identified all the costs and related revenues. In recent years, there has been an increase in the pollination demand, and this increase in interest could lead to an interesting source of income diversification and represent an opportunity in marginal areas. The work has highlighted the economic sustainability of beekeeping in rural areas, at different production scales, both in mountainous and hilly areas, and has proved that the introduction of pollination service could further improve the economic results.

KEYWORDS

Beekeeping; pollination service; economic profitability; sensitivity analysis

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INTRODUCTION

Beekeeping is quite common in almost all the countries in the world, and it is characterised by a large heterogeneity of techniques and productive environments. By observing the data referring to the beekeeping sector for 2014, FAO (2017a) reported a total of 8.3 million hives, whit a total honey production of around 1.5 million tons. Moreover, the production trend appears to be growing, although notable annual fluctuations have been observed. China is the world's largest honey producer, and it accounts for 31% of the total world production (473,600 tons produced). It is followed by Turkey (103,525 tons) and the United States (80,862 t) (FAO, 2017b).

Official statistics, related to the international trade of honey (FAO, 2017c), shows how the quantities exchanged all over the world are constantly growing. In 2016, the overall value of sales was about 1.95 billion dollars (COMTRADE, 2017). China and Argentina are the most important exporting countries, while the USA is the largest importer, with a share of 31%, of globally traded honey (COMTRADE, 2017).

According to National Apiculture Programmes (NAP, 2016) data, there are about 15 million hives in the the European Union, 50% of which...

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