New catastrophic season for French beekeepers

Beekeepers are suffering this year, after a rainy and not warm enough spring and early summer, honey harvests are at their lowest. Near Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, franceinfo met Amor Kaabia, a beekeeper for 25 years. He has 250 hives and was particularly hit by the rainy weather in the spring. It is the worst harvest he has ever experienced.

In front of his hives, Amor counts his losses after the heavy spring rains: “There, I had a hive where half (of the bees) had died of hunger. Here, there are two hives, the same, which have left. It makes carpets of bees, it hurts the heart.” Bees dying of hunger in the spring, at the time of pollination, the beekeeper had never seen that: “The bees weren’t coming out because the weather was bad, with clouds. Some days, it was eight degrees during the day, we’ve never had that. I’ve been in France for 15 years, I’ve never seen a year like that.”

The result: a disastrous harvest, with three times less honey than last year. And the beekeeper is already trying to save the next season. “I try to save what I can savehe says. We are looking for new, slightly sunnier locations to make the most of the heat.” Today, Amor can no longer even pay himself a salary: “I’ve been working twelve hours a day for a few months now. Sometimes I move the bees at night, I harvest during the day and extract the honey in the afternoon to save my livestock, to continue being a beekeeper. Because if it continues like this, maybe one day I’ll find another job to live.” To survive, Amor had to increase its prices by 10%, but that was not enough to compensate for the losses.