French honey production falls in 2026 due to heat waves

A great start to the season, before the heat waves burn the flowers and dry out the vegetation: like many harvests in 2026, that of honey is in sharp decline, with bees put out of work from the start of summer, according to figures published Friday October 2

"It's more and more capricious and it plays out each year depending on the climate. We have ups and down harvests," reports Henri Clément, a beekeeper in Lozère and spokesperson for the National Union of French Apiculture (Unaf), to AFP. This organization, which represents professional and amateur beekeepers, estimates French production between 18,000 and 20,000 tonnes this year, after 23 to 25,000 tonnes in 2025, which was a record level for 20 years.

With a mild and humid winter of 2025-26, "the bee colonies resumed their activities, sometimes from mid-January, early" and "the season promised to be under the best auspices with vegetation which had benefited from excellent hydrometry", underlines Unaf.

Spring honey saved the season

But "the heatwave periods", from the end of May, "have strongly penalized several summer honey flows", indicates InterApi. “The repetition of weather hazards makes harvests difficult to anticipate and weakens the bees,” underlines the organization.

In France, the honey harvests extend from March (rosemary in the South) until November (arbutus in Corsica) and the largest is from April to July. However this year, “from the beginning of June, the bees were not able to work as usual because of the heat waves,” explains Henri Clément.

Spring honey, rapeseed and all flowers, “saved the season for several beekeepers,” he says. But the lavender, the fir, the summer heather were “confidential”. And sunflowers, which represented more than half of production until the 1990s, produced almost nothing this year.