Honey in Czechia

Beekeeping in figures

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, about 63,000 people kept bees in 2023, and the central register recorded 669,445 colonies. The average beekeeper therefore has around eleven colonies; large professional operations are rare. Spread over the country, that comes to roughly 8.5 colonies per square kilometre. Czech specialists count the density of colonies among the highest in Europe.

Harvests vary sharply with the weather and with winter colony losses. The Czech Statistical Office reports 5,941 tonnes of honey produced in 2023, against 7,771 tonnes the year before. The average person eats about a kilogram of honey a year. In recent years domestic production has not fully covered demand, so part of the honey is imported.

What honey Czech bees make

Honey falls into two basic types. Blossom honey comes from flower nectar. Honeydew honey, popularly called ‘forest’ honey, is made from honeydew – the sweet excretions of sap-sucking insects, chiefly aphids and scale insects, living on trees. Since 14 June 2026 both have been defined by Decree No. 490/2025, which replaced the long-standing Decree No. 76/2003; the quality requirements are practically unchanged, and the main change concerns labelling of the country of origin.

In spring the main sources are oilseed rape, fruit trees and dandelion; in summer, black locust (sold as acacia), lime, sunflower and meadow flowers. The most common single-source honeys are rapeseed, lime and acacia. Honeydew comes mostly from spruce and fir, so dark honeydew honey is typical of higher, wooded areas. Because the landscape is so varied, most Czech honey is in fact a blend. The bark-beetle outbreak and the loss of spruce forests in recent years have reduced honeydew sources.

Quality marks

The best known is the ‘Český med’ (Czech Honey) mark of the Czech Beekeepers’ Association. Honey carrying it must come from Czechia and meet the association’s standard, which is stricter than the legal minimum: no more than 18% water (the law allows 20%), no more than 20 mg/kg of hydroxymethylfurfural, an indicator of overheating or age (40 mg/kg in general), and no more than 5% sucrose. Compliance is checked by laboratory analysis, and approved honey is sold under lids bearing the association’s mark.

Honey may also carry the Ministry of Agriculture’s state marks: Klasa, for food of above-average quality, and Regional Food (Regionální potravina), awarded in each region to products of small producers with local roots; honey is regularly among the winners. Czechia has no honey with an EU protected designation of origin.

Research

The Bee Research Institute at Dol, near Libčice nad Vltavou north of Prague, was founded in 1919; its first director was Antonín Schönfeld. It studies bee diseases and resistance, genetics and breeding, the chemistry of hive products and beekeeping technology. Besides research it produces veterinary medicines for beekeepers, analyses honey and judges the Český med competition. It also runs outstations elsewhere, for example at Liběchov.

The beekeeping year

The season opens with spring colony inspections. The first, spring honey is extracted around May and June, after the rape fields and orchards finish flowering; rapeseed honey crystallises quickly, so it cannot be left long in the combs. Summer honey, including honeydew honey, is extracted in July and August. Timing varies from year to year with the weather and altitude.

After the last extraction the bees are given winter stores, and treatment against the varroa mite begins. Over autumn and winter, compulsory treatment and testing of debris from the hive floor are organised by the State Veterinary Administration. Through the winter the bees cluster together and no honey is taken.

Did you know?

Before hives there was tree beekeeping: honey was taken from wild colonies in hollow trees. Forest beekeeping lasted for centuries, and today foresters and enthusiasts revive it with courses in carving tree hives.

Gregor Johann Mendel, the founder of genetics, was also a beekeeper. The bee house he had built still stands in the garden of the Augustinian abbey in Old Brno. For controlled mating he had cages made that only selected drones could enter.

In 1865 Brno hosted a major congress of beekeepers from across Central Europe. Its driving force was the local physician and beekeeper František Xaver Živanský, and it was chaired by Abbot Cyril Napp, Mendel’s superior.

The Silesian priest Johann Dzierzon (Jan Dzierżon, 1811–1906) described in 1845 how drones hatch from unfertilised eggs, and improved the hive with movable parts. He lived, however, in Prussian Silesia, in what is now Poland, not in Czech Silesia.