In recent years, it has been argued that the trend towards alternative tourism has increased gradually in the studies on the development of tourism in the world, and rural tourism has come to the fore among these tourism types. Especially, people who are tired of the chaos of city life, intense work tempo and monotony have started to prefer a holiday where they can be in touch with nature and natural life, thus purifying and resting mentally and physically. On the other hand, sensitivity and awareness about healthy nutrition lead people to eat with natural products. All these developments have increased the interest in rural tourism in the world and in Turkey.
Apitourism has attracted attention as one of the important elements of rural tourism in recent years. The concept of apitourism, which emerged from the combination of the Latin name of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, and tourism; It includes tasting bee products on the routes created for beekeeping, trainings on the production of these products, apitherapy practices and museum visits. Apitourism, on the one hand, allows people to relax by spending time with nature, on the other hand, it also makes an important contribution to regional development by consuming local products.
In today's sense, it is known that apitourism activities started and developed in European countries such as Slovenia, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Spain, Lithuania and the Czech Republic towards the end of the 1900s. In fact, although beekeeping and bee products have been known for tens of thousands of years in almost all geographies of the world and are used both in nutrition and health, it is a phenomenon that should be considered that the emergence of apitourism is so late.
Turkey is among the world's leading countries in terms of both the number of colonies and honey production. On the other hand, it has an important potential in terms of apitourism as it is one of the richest geographies in terms of flora and fauna diversity, where all the features of the four seasons can be experienced together. However, it is very difficult to say that this potential is used sufficiently. Although this situation is seen as a deficiency, it also contains an important opportunity in itself.