YEREVAN, June 13. /ARKA/. There are about 220,000 bee colonies in Armenia now, however, nearly half of bees die annually due to lack of necessary funds for their treatment and prevention of diseases, as well as due to shortage of experts dealing with their treatment, the chairman of the National Union of Beekeepers of Armenia Telman Nazaryan told a news conference today.

Nazaryan recalled that during the Soviet period, the overall number of bee colonies used to grow by 30-35% per year, but now beekeepers barely manage to keep the population at a certain level. Nazaryan also noted that over the past 25 years the beekeeping has recorded no progress in Armenia. 

"Beekeeping has been practiced in Armenia since time immemorial, and now the government has forgotten about this branch of agriculture," he said.

In his turn, the president of the Armenian Technological Academy Vanush Davtyan, said honey produced in Armenia can not be exported to the EU countries because of improper treatment of bees.
"It is necessary to provide for all factors to receive environmentally clean honey that meets strict European standards," he said.

As Davtyan noted, there are three major beekeeping problems in Armenia- diseases, chemicals that are used to treat fields which harm bees, as well as frequencies used by cellular operators.

Honey bees produce rhythmic sound impulses of a certain frequency during the honey harvest, which contain information about the geography of the honey crop and help the bees to orient themselves in space. According to Davtyan, today cellular operators, although they deny this, use frequencies that interfere with bees, as a result the bees are disoriented failing not find their way back home and die.

He said also that Telman Nazaryan has developed a technology that allows getting more royal jelly, which is highly valued, because of being produced in limited amounts.

"If the technology developed by Nazaryan is used throughout Armenia, we can get more profits than from selling honey," he argued. However, for this purpose it is necessary to purchase special equipment, which, in turn, requires government support.

In 2016, Armenian beekeepers produced a total of 3,500 tons of honey. Annually one bee colony produces now 7-10 kg of honey, down from 30-40 kg produced during the Soviet time -0-