Regional variation of beekeeping in Poland

Abstract

Beekeeping is of great significance for the development of agriculture. On the one hand, it may be considered in the context of the acquisition of bee products by beekeepers, and on the other, in terms of the role bees play in the natural environment , i.e. their contribution to the production of higher and better crops. The aim of the paper is to present the beekeeping sector across Poland's regions and to describe the changes it underwent in the studied period. The research was conducted in 2012, 2016 and 2019. The study uses secondary data from reports produced by the Apicultural Division of the Apicultural Division of the Research Institute of Horticulture in Puławy that relate to selected issues concerning the beekeeping sector in Poland. The differences in beekeeping in different parts of Poland were subject to one- and two-dimensional analysis. The latter was performed using methods based on the measurements of the depth of observations in the sample. The research demonstrates that the number of bee colonies and the number of beekeepers were on the rise in the studied years. The largest number of bee colonies was observed in Lubelskie, Małopolskie, Podkarpackie and Warmińsko-Mazurskie voivodships, while the largest production of honey was registered in Lubelskie Voivodship.