When militias and civil war brought havoc and death two years ago to Tarhuna, a pastoral town 90 kilometres southeast of the Libyan capital, beekeeper Ayman Al-Zakkar still managed to maintain his normal honey production. But a fiercer threat to his bee colonies has now emerged: climate change.
Al-Zakkar said that higher-than-normal temperatures and turbulent weather in the past two years have devastated his 180 beehives, costing him over 100,000 Libyan dinars ($21,884).
“The fighting and violence destroyed much of the flora and fauna in this area, but the damage done by climate change is much worse,” he said. “In the past two years, we’ve had temperatures climb to over 40°C and, along with hot winds, they melted honeycombs in the hives, with the bees inside, killing most of them and driving the rest away.”
