Cuban Honey — A Delectable Treat

I often lament the food in Cuba, but one delightful find is their honey.

The bees of the Province of Santiago de Cuba feast on the flowers of the coffee and cocoa plants, as well as other wild flowers, giving the honey a rich almost smoky flavor.

Honey production in Cuba is not easy. The typical apiarists set-up of hives and netting and smoke do not exist. Instead the “beekeeper” heads into the woods and collects the combs. These are then hauled down on horseback, or tractors. This cannot be an easy or very safe task. Fortunately the Africanized or Killer Bee has not yet reached Cuba.

There are about 2000 “beekeepers” in Cuba, but it is difficult to have an actual count, as nothing in Cuba is as it seems.

Cuba is a communist country, so these collectors are not able to sell their product themselves; instead it is delivered to the Cuban State’s Apicuba Company.

These “beekeepers” are allowed to keep some for their personal consumption, and this is how I came to be the proud owner of an 8 ounce bottle of this heavenly nectar.

Apicuba has two plants for filtering and homogenizing the honey. One is in the Province of Santiago de Cuba and the other in the Province of Sancti Spiritus, which handles approximately 70% of the honey produced in Cuba.

Apicuba, then sells the honey to the state owned Cubaexport and 98.5% of all the honey is exported to Europe to the tune of 16 million Euros (17.4 million US). This breaks down to a cost of about $500 US per raw ton. It is impossible to know what the worker actually makes, but I promise it is mere pennies on the dollar.

A twelve ounce bottle of honey costs a Cuban around $2 US, while that seems inexpensive that is the equivalent of two days pay. This would lead one to assume that is why so much is exported, the truth is that Cuba is desperate for hard dollars, so most everything is exported out of Cuba.

Cuba expects to produce 10,000 tons of honey by 2020. They are hoping to accomplish this by improving the collection situation. They are delivering stainless-steel purification tanks to the farmers, which I witnessed in the state of Santiago de Cuba.

As capitalism seeps into Cuba, it is most likely that more and more Cubans will be able to afford this delightful product, but for now, I consider myself very lucky to have a “friend in the business”.