Cuban Honey Sweetens Europe While It Sours for Producers
overwhelmed by unpaid debts and lack of supplies
By Raul Medina Orama (El Toque)
HAVANA TIMES – Any jar of organic honey sold in shops in Germany, Spain, or France —and in other European Union countries— may contain the product of Carlos’s hard work and the dozens of hives he maintains in a rural area of eastern Cuba. Yet this beekeeper is one of many dissatisfied with the State’s debts to producers and with the new payment terms imposed after the XIII Congress of the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), held in mid-May 2025.
Carlos says his relationship with the Cuban Government can be defined only as “abuse and exploitation,” he told El Toque. “All the company does is collect the honey and other hive products and pay whenever they feel like it,” he denounces.
In May 2025, the production chief in his municipality informed him that the price of a ton of “top-quality” honey would be 650 USD, deposited into a prepaid card at the Banco de Crédito y Comercio (Bandec). Under the previous system, Carlos was supposed to receive, on average, “600 MLC [magnetic currency)] and 40,000 Cuban pesos for each ton” sold to the state enterprise.
Although MLC is only usable inside Cuba, and in theory the new payment —denominated in US dollars— would be more valuable, Carlos believes the system, to be implemented once they start paying in dollars for August’s work, is “worse.” The reason: without the portion paid in Cuban pesos and without free access to the dollars, he effectively has less money for his operations.
“They told us the payment would be higher and on an international card. It would be useful to buy abroad, you see? But when we go to the bank, they hand us a prepaid card valid only in Cuba,” he says.
Carlos is not his real name. He asked El Toque to protect his identity and not disclose the exact location of his hives in eastern Cuba, fearing reprisals from Apicuba, the state enterprise that handles the collection, processing, and commercialization of honey, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly.
The contract farmers must sign with the state entity to operate legally requires “absolute confidentiality.” It also stipulates that both parties would be exempt from responsibility for “events that could not have been foreseen” or “were inevitable, considered force majeure or acts of God.”
Few in the sector doubt which side violates its responsibilities without consequences. Uncertainty and discontent reign these days among much of the country’s honey producers.
A “Fresh Start”?
At the ANAP Congress on May 16–17, 2025, new “foreign currency financing schemes” were announced to boost export sectors like charcoal, coffee, cocoa, and honey.
The state exporter will control most of the funds. Producers’ share would be deposited into real foreign-currency accounts with access to wholesale and retail markets in foreign currency, including fuel.
However, Resolution 25/2025 of the Ministry of Economy and Planning on financing charcoal production imposed restrictions on foreign-currency accounts: “Producers cannot (…) transfer to other foreign-currency accounts or withdraw cash.”
The state newspaper Granma confirmed that, in the case of “honey, it will work the same [as with charcoal] with Apicuba, Cítricos Caribe, and Cubaexport, and the producer will receive 650 USD per ton” in the new accounts.
E. Díaz, a honey producer from Camagüey, criticized the new system on the Facebook group Apicultores en Cuba: “Those who took it upon themselves to decide producer payments have never stood in front of a hive, the Cuban beekeeping community wasn’t consulted, the costs of the activity weren’t considered, honey prices drop while essential resources rise, a beekeeper needs labor and how will they be paid, they gave us a card with a number that can’t be transferred.”
Despite promises from ANAP and the Ministry of Agriculture of better times for exporters, the Cuban State still hasn’t paid beekeepers for deliveries made in previous years.
“They still owe us more than half of the foreign currency from 2024 and everything we should have been paid in 2025. At least here where I live, no money has arrived from that production,” Carlos says.
He explains that the honey he’s been paid for recently comes from 2023 and early 2024. He’s still owed “for four tons from last year and everything delivered this year.”
El Toque reviewed invoices provided by the source, stamped by Apicuba, showing the amounts the state company committed to pay for the collected kilograms of “organic honey” and propolis.
Independent outlet 14yMedio has also reported State debts to honey producers in Villa Clara, Sancti Spíritus, and Camagüey.
“They tell us the State has no foreign currency to put in our bank accounts and that we have to wait,” a producer from Manicaragua (Villa Clara) told the outlet.
The situation has pushed several beekeepers (like Carlos) to sell part of their production on the informal market, risking their contracts if discovered and being banned from continuing their work.
“Before, I didn’t sell ‘under the table’; I gave everything to the state buyer. Later I realized they delay payments too much, and I had to start selling to people who came to my house for personal use, or in larger quantities to other private operators who use honey in their businesses.”
Feeding Off the Hive Without Working It
Cuban honey is highly valued in the European Union. In 2023, Germany bought up 50% of the island’s global sales, according to the state publication Opciones. But it’s not the only country where the product “flies” off the shelves.
The broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) opened a recent report with this scene: “In the heart of Paris, in a store devoted to honey (…), you have to get in line. Why? On the shelves, Cuban honey, creamy, with fruity and spicy tones, starting at 7 EUR per 250 grams, is sold out.”
According to DW, Europeans prize Cuban honey for its taste and qualities, produced without pesticides and with “bougainvillea, orchid, and almond tones.”
Granma notes that 90% of Cuba’s honey is exported, included in the Comprehensive Strategy for Exports of Goods and Services for 2019–2030.
Furthermore, “more than 90% of Cuban hives belong to private beekeepers, linked to cooperatives (…).” But these agricultural workers believe they are not fairly compensated, even though they do almost all the work and generate millions in profits for state enterprises.
“For propolis [a hive product with health benefits], they still haven’t given us the new price, and what they pay us is insignificant. As for honey, it’s extremely expensive on the international market. It shouldn’t be that they pay us so little, the State keeps everything.”
Official international trade data shows that in 2023, Germany imported 3,719,390 kg of Cuban honey for more than 10.5 million dollars. That’s about 2,875 USD per ton. In the same year, France valued Cuban honey at around 3,233 USD per ton.
“We beekeepers are not satisfied with the amount we’re paid per ton. We’ve never agreed with it, before or now, but we have no voice or vote in that decision. The State takes 80% and we get about 20%,” Carlos told El Toque. “And the bosses had told us they’d pay more” under the new system.
Recently, dozens of people have expressed opinions similar to Carlos’s in the Facebook group Apicultores en Cuba, which has more than 13,000 members.
Producer E. Díaz from Camagüey questioned whether “with so many restrictions, beekeeping in Cuba is being promoted or being destroyed.”
Reinier Batista, who makes hive parts in Santiago de Cuba, complained about working conditions in his workshop: “half-powered, unsupported, with current sales prices discouraging input production, we risk reducing our output for the beekeeping world. We have no choice; at this rate, we can’t even restore our infrastructure.”
Another Camagüey beekeeper, Keytell Munster Tendero, wrote: “There is never transparency in exports (…), we never know how much (…) my honey is being sold for abroad (…) and on top of that we have to cover all expenses, fuel in dollars at 1.10/L, produce or invent carpentry hive inputs, and when available we have to buy them at outrageous prices.”
Munster added: “What they’ve done is unjust, stop centralizing everything and stop taking away our earnings to subsidize salaries for people who don’t produce in this country (…), stop robbing us.”
Carlos also points out another problem: the company collects honey from apiaries but weighs and grades it at Apicuba’s processing plant, without asking the producer “whether he agrees with the weight or the quality they assign”, both factors that determine the purchase price.
He also complains of having to buy, at high cost, his own materials for the hives, such as wood and prefabricated sheets that guide bees in building their hexagonal combs.
“It’s not easy. We have families and must cut down on food to buy wood to repair hives damaged by time and weather.”
Working conditions, state management, and obstacles to fair compensation may be taking a toll on this once-promising industry.
According to the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), in 2023 —the latest data available— around 231,400 hives in Cuba produced 6,700 tons of honey, less than in previous years: 9,200 tons in 2022 and 10,500 tons in 2021. Honey yield per hive also fell: 28.9 kg in 2023, compared to 44.3 kg in 2022 and 47.6 kg in 2021.
Despite his youth, Carlos has dedicated years to beekeeping and hopes to continue —if conditions don’t worsen further for those who harvest the product that the Cuban State sells at high prices in the developed world.
“I love working the hives. I come to any of my apiaries, and time just flies, because it’s what I like to do. But the Government discourages us every time it imposes these measures. It’s upsetting because this is our work, but we also want to live and earn decently for what we do.”
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.