A journalist follows Yemen’s nomadic beekeepers as they hold the pressures of climate, deforestation and war at bay
Recommended by: Abdirahim Saeed
The thorny Sidr tree, scattered throughout Yemen, is a natural marvel.
Its deep roots protect it from the vagaries of rainfall in even some of the most water-stressed places on earth. Its leaves are used to make disinfectants, shampoo and anti-inflammatories. Its fruit boosts immunity. But for some, it is the Sidr tree’s flowers which form its bounty: feasted on by bees during a short blooming season from mid-September to mid-November, the raw ingredients of a prized honey which can sell for as much as $150 a kilo.
Seasonal migration known as tazeeb has long been the practice of Yemen’s cattle herders. Increasingly it is being adopted by its beekeepers, chasing the bloom cycle of various flowers, moving between the country’s highlands and its interior, transporting hives across difficult landscapes to make the most of the richness of a fragile ecosystem.
Generally, this happens at night – when the beekeepers can be sure the bees have returned home. Sometimes it happens under dramatic circumstances. Maeen al-Najri’s article begins with beekeeper Mosad Al-Humairi watching as a flash flood envelops the truck carrying his hives on their 288-kilometre journey cross country: “for what felt like an eternity, I stood frozen, fearing the loss of half my bees as my three sons scrambled to stabilize the truck.
Despite its risks, tazeeb has become an essential part of Yemeni beekeeping. Al-Humairi inherited 61 hives from his father in 2010. These numbers increased only slowly – regularly decimated by heat and cold – until he began moving from place to place more often, searching out the best conditions for his bees. By 2024, 61 hives had become 97. The agriculture ministry of the Houthi-led government in Sanaa counted an increase of 100,000 hives across the country between 2017 and 2020. Some eighty percent of beekeepers now move their hives seasonally.
It is a precarious business: a reflection of necessity as much as entrepreneurialism. 20-year-old Montaser Al-Harazi explains that he spends his entire day near the beehives, setting up traps to capture any approaching snakes, guarding the bees with a slingshot. “If just one hornet gets inside, it’s a disaster,” he tells Maeen al-Najri: “Not only does it kill many bees, but it can cause the whole colony to flee.”
As in other parts of the world, the use of pesticides represents another risk. There have been clashes between malaria control teams and beekeepers. “Pesticide campaigns cause mass bee deaths”, says the government’s director of livestock resources. In the context of Yemen’s prolonged economic crisis, the cutting down of trees for firewood – even live trees which are later dried out – represents another risk. Sidr forests are shrinking.
Desertification and unpredictable weather patterns force beekeepers into constant movement. “Beekeepers from regions like Shabwa in the south and Tihama in the west have abandoned their original homes”, the official explains, “spending the entire year migrating in search of forage” – not a lifestyle but a livelihood.
Original article (“How an Ancient Yemeni Tradition Is Reviving Bee Populations”) by journalist Maeen Al-Najri and photographer Adel Bishr, first published in English on 7 April 2025, in collaboration with Egab.
It’s available here.
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Summary by ML
Abdirahim Saeed is a journalist and editor based in London. He is currently an open-source investigation editor at BBC News Arabic. He specialises in international current affairs, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His reports for the BBC have been published or aired in English and Arabic as well as other BBC World Service languages. Some of his recent investigations covered varied topics, including the humanitarian situation in Gaza, government mismanagement in Libya, racism in Tunisia and the spread of disinformation online. His works have been cited and translated in international media, including in The Guardian, The Register and Arab News.
