STUDY CONCERNING THE TRENDS IN ROMANIA'S HONEY MARKET.

The paper aimed to analyze Romania's honey market in the period 1990-2009, based on the INSSE data, using the index method. In 2009, Romania had 1,057 bee families, about 45,000 beekeepers, meaning 23 bee families per apiary. The number of bee families has increased by 9.76% compared to 1990 but the number of beekeepers decreased by 56% compared to 1980. Honey production reached 19.93 tones in 2009, being by 1.8 times higher than in 1990. Ecological honey represents about 16% of production. Producer honey price increased up to Lei 8-9/kg and Lei 15-20/kg in the free market, and the export price varies between Euro 2.5 -3.5/kg. Honey consumption increased up to 0.5 kg/capita in 2009, but it is still low compared to the EU average. The EU high demand and production deficit has encouraged Romania to export 70 % of its production, the main beneficiaries being Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Austria and Belgium. Since 2005, Romania has imported small amounts of honey from Czech Republic, China, Germany, Hungary, Spain and Austria. Romania comes on the 19th position in the world for honey production and on the 11th one for the honey export value. As a conclusion, honey market is continuously increasing, Romania being a net exporting country of high quality honey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]