COKEK, Turkey — Beekeepers Mustafa Alti and his son Fehmi
were kept busy tending to their hives before wildfires tore through a bucolic
region of Turkey that makes most of the world's prized pine honey.
اضافة اعلان
Now the Altis and generations of other honey farmers in Turkey's Aegean
province of Mugla are scrambling to find additional work and wondering how many
decades it might take to get their old lives back on track.
"Our means of existence is from beekeeping, but when the forests
burned, our source of income fell," said Fehmi, 47, next to his
mountainside beehives in the fire-ravaged village of Cokek.
"I do side jobs, I do some tree felling, that way we manage to make
do."
Nearly 200,000 hectares of forests — more than five times the annual average
— were scorched by fires across Turkey this year, turning luscious green coasts
popular with tourists into ash.
The summer disaster and an accompanying series of deadly floods made the
climate — already weighing heavily on the minds of younger voters — a major
issue two years before the next scheduled election.
Signalling a political shift, Turkey's parliament this week ended a
five-year wait and ratified the Paris Agreement on cutting the greenhouse
emissions that are blamed for global warming and abnormal weather events.
But the damage has already been done in Mugla, where 80 percent of Turkey's
pine honey is produced.
Turkey as a whole makes 92 percent of the world's pine honey, meaning
supplies of the thick, dark amber may be running low worldwide very soon.
Special insect
Turkey's pine honey harvests were already suffering from drought when the
wildfires hit, destroying the delicate balance between bees, trees, and the
little insects at the heart of the production process.
The honey is made by bees after they collect the sugary secretions of the
tiny Basra beetle (Marchalina hellenica), which lives on the sap of pine
trees.
Fehmi hopes the beetles will adapt to younger trees after the fires. But he
also accepts that "it will take at least five or 10 years to get our
previous income back".
His father Mustafa agrees, urging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
government to expand forested areas and plant young trees.
"There's no fixing a burnt house. Can you fix the dead? No. But new
trees might come, a new generation," Mustafa said.
For now, though, the beekeepers are counting their losses and figuring out
what comes next.
The president of the Mugla Beekeepers' Association, Veli Turk, expects his
region's honey production to plunge by up to 95 percent this year.
"There is pretty much no Marmaris honey left," he said.
"This honey won't come for another 60 years," he predicted.
"It's not just Turkey. This honey would go everywhere in the world. It was
a blessing. This is really a huge loss."
'So much loss'
Beekeeper Yasar Karayigit, 45, is thinking of switching to a different type
of honey to keep his passion — and sole source of income — alive.
"I love beekeeping, but to continue, I'll have to pursue alternatives,"
Karayigit said, mentioning royal jelly (or "bee milk") and sunflower
honey, which involves additional costs.
"But if we love the bees, we have to do this," the father-of-three
said.
Ismail Atici, head of the Milas district Chamber of Agriculture in Mugla,
said the price of pine honey has doubled from last year, threatening to make
the popular breakfast food unaffordable for many Turks.
He expects price rises to continue and supplies to become ever scarcer.
"We will get to a point where even if you have money, you won't be able
to find those medicinal plants and medicinal honey," Atici said.
"It's going to be very hard to find 100-percent pine honey,"
beekeeper Karayigit agreed. "We have had so much loss."
'We must continue'
Looking ahead, the president of the Turkey Beekeepers' Association, Ziya
Sahin, suggests selectively introducing the Basra beetle to new areas of Mugla,
expanding coverage from the current seven to 25 percent of local pine forests.
"If we conduct transplantation of the beetle from one area to another
and continue this for two successive years, we can protect the region's
dominance in the sector," Sahin said.
"There will be a serious drop in honey production if we don't do
this," he added, calling this year the "worst" of his 50-year
career.
Yet despite the pain and the troubled road ahead, the younger Alti has no
plans to quit.
"This is my father's trade. Because this is passed down from the
family, we must continue it," Fehmi said.
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