Pine honey victim of fires in Turkey

The two beekeepers, Mustafa Alti and his son Fahmy, used to produce pine honey of the finest quality in the world, but their lives were turned upside down by the fires that swept the summer in the Mugla region on the Aegean Sea in Turkey.

As is the case with other producers of pine honey in this region in southwest Turkey, the first in the world to manufacture this honey, the family is looking for a source of livelihood, especially since they do not know how long it will take before returning to their usual life.

"When the forest burns, our revenues evaporate with it," says Fahmy, in front of the bee hives in the town of Chuquik, where the fires broke out.

"I do other jobs and chop down trees, so this is how we manage," added the forty-year-old man.

This year, the fires destroyed about 200,000 hectares of forests in Turkey, five times more than the annual average, destroying vast green areas that were attracting tourists.

The catastrophe, followed by deadly floods, has made climate change, which was already at the center of the concerns of young Turkish voters, a follicle of political debates two years before the upcoming presidential elections.

The beekeepers in the area were already suffering from drought, but the summer fires broke the fragile balance that existed between bees, trees and small insects necessary in this episode.

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