When Category 5 Hurricane Melissa swept across Jamaica, it left more than just physical infrastructure damage in its wake: the storm wiped out an estimated 16,000 commercial bee colonies, triggering a national honey shortage that has rippled through every segment of the country’s agricultural and manufacturing supply chains.
Before the storm hit, Jamaica’s apiculture industry supported roughly 120,000 active bee colonies across the island. Hugh Smith, head of the Apiculture Unit under Jamaica’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Mining, called the damage catastrophic, estimating total sector losses at approximately $600 million. Beyond the immediate colony loss, the storm has shifted regional production timelines, reduced output for surviving colonies, and pushed the upcoming honey harvest back by one to three months in many affected areas. Smith confirmed that full recovery of lost colonies will take at least two years, as beekeepers work to rebuild populations from the remaining stock.
The shortage has created cascading challenges for manufacturers that rely on local Jamaican honey as a core input. Since the beginning of the year, the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA) has received multiple requests from member companies struggling to secure consistent, fairly priced honey supplies. Kamesha Blake, JMEA’s Executive Director, explained that retail buyers, who can afford to pay premium prices for scarce honey, are outcompeting manufacturing operations for limited stock. “We had one member that put out a public call for suppliers, but all respondents said the manufacturer’s offered price was far too low to accept,” Blake told local reporters. “With supply already tight, retail naturally pulls all available stock because of the higher margins it offers.”
For herbal products manufacturer Shavuot International, the shortage has forced direct cuts to production volume. Managing Director Joel Harris said he has spent three months searching for reliable honey supplies, and has only been able to secure a fraction of the volume his firm purchased before the hurricane. “Most suppliers tell us they haven’t rebuilt their production capacity yet, and the storm completely shifted the harvest season,” Harris explained. “Beekeepers are easy to reach, but almost none have any honey available to sell. Any small batch they produce gets bought up immediately by retail buyers, so locking in a steady supply has been incredibly difficult.”
Stakeholders across the sector say the imbalance between supply and demand is the most severe it has been in recent memory. Local beekeeper Roger Mitchell, based in Jamaica’s St Elizabeth parish, told reporters that he and most of his colleagues lost nearly half of their colonies to the storm. With demand spiking to unprecedented levels — Mitchell now receives weekly inquiries from new manufacturers and distributors, a pattern he says was rare before the hurricane — beekeepers are forced to make a difficult choice: prioritize immediate honey sales to meet current demand, or split existing colonies to rebuild lost populations for future production. For Mitchell, the choice is clear: “We’re sacrificing all of 2026 production to rebuild. This season is a write-off, and we’re hoping for a full recovery by next year’s harvest.” Some beekeepers are also hoarding existing stock, holding off on sales in anticipation of further price increases as supplies shrink, worsening the immediate shortage.
For small-scale apiculture investors, the damage has long-term financial impacts. Smith noted that many beekeepers planned to reinvest revenue from this season’s harvest into expansion projects spanning the next two to five years. With the loss of most of their colonies, those plans have been put on indefinite hold. “It’s not just the 16,000 lost colonies we’re dealing with,” Smith explained. “Even surviving colonies are producing one to two gallons less honey per colony than they did pre-storm, so productivity across the entire sector is down.” To put the loss in perspective, each lost colony produces roughly three gallons of honey per season, which sells for roughly $20,000 per gallon at current market prices.
Despite the widespread damage, Jamaican agricultural authorities have already launched recovery initiatives to return the sector to pre-hurricane output levels. The Apiculture Unit has rolled out training for beekeepers on advanced queen-breeding techniques, which will speed up colony reproduction and population replenishment. To address the loss of foraging vegetation that bees rely on for food, the government is distributing 1,500 new fruit trees across the island, with a focus on regions that suffered widespread defoliation during the storm. A $40 million investment has also been allocated to supply sugar to feed bee colonies while new vegetation matures.
Smith added that while current stockpiles of market-ready honey are expected to run out before the next harvest begins, changing climate patterns may create unexpected off-season honey production that could partially offset the shortage. He also urged beekeepers to avoid excessive price gouging as the market adjusts to the new supply reality, emphasizing that government efforts are already underway to return supply to pre-storm levels within the next two years.