Photo: Taylor Luck.
Apiarist and entrepreneur Hela Boubaker stands next to one of her collections of beehives on a farm in Bizerte, Tunisia.
There are two news outlets I especially love for their focus on parts of the world most US media ignores until there’s a disaster. One is the weekday radio show The World. The other is the Christian Science Monitor. These organizations interview people on the ground in foreign countries, voices we seldom hear with perspectives we know nothing about.
In today’s example, Taylor Luck reports at the Monitor on what extreme heat is doing to beekeeping in Tunisia and how beekeepers are adapting to the warming trends that affect us all.
“Tunisian beekeeper Hela Boubaker keeps a firm smile as she inspects an empty hive box, the 20th hive she has lost due to heat or wildfires this year. Hives are carefully placed in the shade on this farm 40 miles north of the capital, Tunis. At 10 a.m. on a late-August Tuesday, it is already 95 degrees.
“Thirsty bees dive-bomb a bucket of water, drowning for a drink before she can place a sponge as a landing pad.
‘It’s not easy,’ she says as she slides an empty honeycomb frame back into its box, ‘but at the same time, we are not easy: We won’t give up.’
“In this North African country, where nearly 40% of citizens and entire communities rely on farming for their livelihoods, bees are a big business. And to protect their beehives against extreme weather, the nation’s apiarists are turning to innovative solutions. …
“Some 13,000 Tunisians work as full-time beekeepers, according to local farming unions, in addition to thousands more who rely on apiary work as another source of income, producing a combined 280,000 metric tons of honey per year. Yet for those new to beekeeping in Tunisia, the past two years have been no honeymoon.
“Tunisia has seen record-setting scorching temperatures, including dayslong 115-plus-degree heat waves and record 120-degree temperatures in its tree-lined temperate north – the nation’s beekeeping hub – that sparked devastating wildfires in 2022 and again this July. This year the country has also struggled with a record drought, leaving regions without water for weeks at a time.
“According to researchers and apiarists, the extreme weather has nearly halved honey production, from an average of 8 kilos (17 pounds) of honey per hive to 4 to 5 kilos per hive in 2023.
“Ms. Boubaker, an entrepreneur in her late 20s, is finding ways to keep her bees alive. She has developed a patented device and nonlethal method to extract bee venom from her honeybees, drawing exactly 0.01 grams of apitoxin per bee to be used in medical treatments and beauty products. …
“To adapt to a changing climate, Ms. Boubaker is working with other apiarists to better cultivate the rented or borrowed plots of farmers’ land where they place their hives. Increasingly, they rely on drought-resistant and hearty plants such as lemon trees, thyme, and marjoram to ensure year-round nectar and food sources for hives, as more delicate flowers and plants wilt in increasingly hot temperatures.
“Like many apiarists, she rotates her beehives through geographic locations with varying topographies – the mountainous pine-treed north, the more arid south, and the rich fertile farmland around Bizerte.
“Ms. Boubaker’s commute to check on her dispersed 82 colonies is a six-hour, 200-mile round trip that she takes every two days. Yet the geographic dispersal of apiarists’ beehives has led to another, emerging threat to Tunisia’s honey-makers: crime. Specifically, theft. …
“ ‘Only a beekeeper would have the knowledge and equipment to be able to pick up hives and transport them,’ says Ms. Boubaker, who rents fields in gated farms to minimize theft. ‘Unfortunately, people are desperate. When you lose the source of your livelihood, you are desperate to rebuild it. Some may be tempted to steal money. Others steal bees.’
“To help Tunisian beekeepers confront 21st-century challenges, innovators are putting constantly updated apiary data in an app. …
“Says Khaled Bouchoucha, a Tunisian engineer who has grappled with solving Tunisia’s plummeting bee numbers, ‘All the knowledge beekeepers have accumulated for decades and generations is no longer applicable’ in a rapidly changing climate.
“In 2021, Mr. Bouchoucha developed and launched SmartBee, a device and app that provides beekeepers with real-time data on hive temperature, humidity, weight, and mortality rates. …
“With the data, advance warnings, and advice sent to beekeepers’ phones, apiarists are informed when to move overheated hives to cooler areas and when isolated hives have become too cold, or they’re alerted to provide sugar solutions to boost weak bees – a critical service when hives are often dozens of miles away. SmartBee is also an anti-theft device.”
More at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Subscription price is reasonable.
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