On November 26, the Chinese Beekeeping Society awarded The "Hometown of Chinese Bees" plaque in Longmen County, Huizhou City, fully affirming the strategic decision of the Longmen County Party Committee and the county government to develop the bee industry.
A veritable beekeeping county
Longmen County is located in the tropics, subtropics, abundant rainfall, warm climate, rich in honey source plants, more than 160 kinds of species, a year of spring, summer, winter three seasons can harvest commercial honey, especially in winter there are duck foot wood, wild osmanthus flowers, loquat and so on, with high yield and stable yield characteristics.
According to Lin Weizhong, director of the Longmen County Beekeeping Research Institute, all the bees raised in Longmen are South China type chinese bees (referred to as "middle bees"), which are raised in modern live frames. At present, the breeding scale is about 130,000 groups, the annual output is 2500 tons, the annual output value is more than 100 million yuan, and the number of people in the bee industry is more than 2700.
Longmen has a number of professional bee farms with a certain scale, each beekeeper has undergone professional training, and most of them have the training certificate of "National Bee Product Safety and Standardized Production Technology" of the Chinese Beekeeping Society, and some of them have obtained the "National Occupational Skills of Bee Breeders" appraisal certificate.
As the dragon gate of a large beekeeping county, bee farming has a long history. As early as the Song Dynasty, there were bees distributed in Longmen; the "Longmen County Chronicle" of the Kangxi Period of the Qing Dynasty has a record of "honey".
After the founding of New China, the beekeeping industry in Longmen developed rapidly. In 2000, the bee colony of Longmen already accounted for one-tenth of the total beekeeping in Guangdong Province, so there is a saying that "10 nests of bees in Guangdong, and 1 nest in Longmen".
In 2012, Longmen County was rated as "National Beekeeping Demonstration County" and was also listed as "National Bee Industry Technology System Demonstration County". In 2018, Longmen Honey obtained the National Agricultural Product Geographical Indication Registration Certificate.
There are two main criteria for the selection of "Chinese Bee Town", namely the long history of beekeeping and the scale of bee breeding to reach more than 50,000 groups, while Longmen County has been successfully evaluated for its long history of beekeeping and huge breeding scale.
Increase industrial support and build the first county of Chinese bees
Lin Weizhong introduced that the Longmen County Party Committee and the county government attach great importance to the development of the local beekeeping industry, and have successively established the county beekeeping research institute, association and cooperative to manage the beekeeping industry in the county, and give full play to the leading role of the base science demonstration, science and technology promotion, science and technology training, scientific and technological consultation, and science and technology to benefit farmers.
Since 2017, the Party Committee of the County Supply and Marketing Association has actively promoted the creation of the "Hometown of Chinese Bees". According to statistics, in recent years, the county beekeeping institute, association and cooperative jointly organized and held 18 sessions of Chinese bee breeding technology training courses, training a total of 2880 people, to solve the doubts of the majority of beekeepers.
At present, longmen county dragon beekeeping professional cooperative has 151 members, with fixed assets of 5.71 million yuan, a 500 tons honey processing production line, a total of 28,600 bee colonies.
The cooperative provides all-round services for bee breeding and management for members and beekeepers free of charge, promotes the standardization and large-scale production of honey, plays a bridge role in the training of bee disease prevention technology and market circulation, and provides one-stop service of production, supply and marketing of "upper market and lower beekeepers", which promotes the rapid development of beekeeping in the county. At present, beekeeping has become a major economic source for local people to get rich and well-off.
At the end of 2018, Longmen County also issued the "Longmen Bee Modern Agricultural Industrial Park Construction Plan" to further increase policy support. Longmen Bee Modern Agricultural Industrial Park aims to create a characteristic bee town integrating honey source planting and ornamentation, beekeeping production experience, and bee culture tourism and tourism, and promote the multi-format integration and development of the bee industry, the health industry and the tourism industry. At the same time, we will accelerate the capital, talents and enterprises in the honey industry to settle in Longmen, promote the revitalization and development of the beekeeping industry, build honey into a characteristic business card of Longmen, and build Longmen into the first county of Chinese bees.