A number parties in the industry often state that there is not enough 'space' for more beekeepers in South Africa. When it is quite plain that there is not enough structure and planning when beekeepers claim this time of viewpoint.
I published articles and newsletters years ago about the amount of hectares under planting in South Africa outlining the number of hives that would be needed to provide for pollination purposes alone - let alone the honey production depending on your goals.
Check on the grower's associations of the sunflower, mango, avocado, litchi, orange and onion farmers for example. These alone make up approximately 603,099 hectares (ha), based on recent data from 2024 and 2025. (Source: NAMC)
Using an average of three (3) hives per hectare for pollination this would mean a requirement of over 1,8 million hives in South Africa in total. Granted, that would assume EVERY FARMER would have bees on every hectare so let's compare that to the estimated number of hives under management in South Africa...
The most recent national government data from February 2020 recorded a total of 161,610 managed hives, but the actual number is believed to be much higher due to unregistered colonies.
The total area planted to deciduous fruit in South Africa is approximately 54,052 hectares for pome and stone fruit as per 2023 statistics. This is not included in the required number of hives mentioned above for those growers. And the average of deciduous fruit is at least 4 honeybee hives per hectare.
Seeing as though apples and pears have a high affinity to improved yield and quality of fruit when pollinating with honeybees, there's a much higher success rate of servicing and or providing pollination services with set rates per hive and standardised agreements already mainstream.
Even if we double the 2020 data of 161,000 honeybee hives that still leaves the grower's associations wholly short of highly impactful and beneficial support of higher yield. It makes the potential figure being 320,000 which still only caters for 16% of required managed hives.
Let's look at it another way: While a precise, nationwide count is difficult to obtain due to their cryptic nesting habits, the density of wild honeybee colonies in South Africa is notably high compared to other regions.
Studies in the African dry highland savannahs of Gauteng estimated densities of 12.4 to 17.6 colonies per square kilometer. Another global study indicates a higher regional average of 6.8 colonies per square kilometer for Africa, though local densities can vary significantly
Total Arable Area: Based on these figures, the total area of arable land is roughly 120,880 square kilometers. Going on rough estimated average of 6.8 per hectare and JUST on the arable land that gives a likely 821,984 honeybee colonies being sustained in the country that go unmanaged. Remains to be only 39% of the grower's association needs.
There is not enough space or food for the honeybees for the whole year.
This is another myth claimed by parties that either do not have proper strategy or want to gatekeep the opportunity for new beekeepers wanting to expand.
There is enough diversity in our weather and agriculture, not to mention the non-edible and indigenous flora in our amazing country when creating a nectar flow calendar for yourself - to cover at least 8 months of the year.
What may be challenging is to secure apiary sites that already have the desired flora in the months that run consecutively with nectar flow within a reasonable distance of each other.
We teach this strategy and method on our beekeeping courses.
