Malawi’s apiculture sector is promoted mainly as a forest conservation tool, and few producers run it as a business. Yet it can drive rural incomes, pollination services, and export earnings. In this brief, we draw on consultations with producers, processors, aggregators, and technical experts to show how. Producer groups earn gross margins of 75–88% and can recover start-up costs within a year with at least 35 hives. Value addition lifts prices from K2,500–5,000 per kg for raw honey from remote, hard-to-reach areas to K15,000–26,000 per kg for packaged retail honey. Weak technical skills, short-cycle donor projects, pesticide exposure, and a lack of certification and traceability keep producers out of higher-value markets. We propose reforms for DAHLD, MBS, training institutions, producers, and the private sector. These include a national apiculture strategy, residue and disease surveillance, and public-private aggregation centres at the EPA level.