Beekeeper keeps busy in the face of some harsh conditions
Panoramic views of the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights greet visitors to the Roman ruins at Gadara, in northern Jordan.
Only a few tourists have visited since the coronavirus pandemic began.
The sellers who used to peddle their wares have mostly gone. The car park outside has a few vehicles, but no tourist buses.
But the pandemic has been good for business for Youssef Saiyahin, a beekeeper and native of Umm Qais, the town next to the ruins. “We saw demand grow during the lockdowns, because honey is good for the immune system,” Mr Saiyahin says.
He is one of 2,000 beekeepers in Jordan, raising the insects in a country that has suffered environmental degradation in recent years.
Many Jordanian farmers make heavy use of chemicals. Illegal wells are dug for irrigation, emptying groundwater faster than it can be replenished.
Lack of zoning enforcement has also blighted Umm
Qais and much of the countryside near Irbid, Jordan’s third-largest city, with concrete buildings.
The chemicals farmers sprayed at the start of spring, an important season of flower blooms for beekeepers, killed 5 per cent of Mr Saiyahin’s bees this year.
Some beekeepers lost entire hives, he says.
The Jordanian Beekeepers Union has complained to
Agriculture Ministry for years, hoping that the government would subsidise less harmful but more expensive options.
Mr Saiyahin first learnt about beekeeping when he was 12, from an uncle. It started as a hobby then became a business, which he combines with bed-and-breakfast accommodation that he helps to run in Umm Qais.
He also leads bee tourism, taking customers on tours from the guest house to the area in which he has 25 boxes containing hives.
The tourists wear protective gear as he shows them how bees behave.
“I call it the civilisation of bees,” he says, and points out that the insects survived for millions of years “by co-operating”.
His business is built on trust, with the market wary that many beekeepers in Jordan feed their bees too much sugar. Mr Saiyahin says sometimes it is necessary to feed the colony a little honey to prevent it from starving, or to promote breeding.
This is sometimes needed in August, when there are no flowers from which the bees can collect nectar to store as honey.
But if the beekeeper relies on sugar, the output “is no longer honey”, Mr Saiyahin says.
Umm Qais is regarded as one of the Jordanian regions with the most diverse flowers, including irises in the spring.
The region mainly produces spring flower honey and later, in June and July, honey from thorny plants such as Syrian mesquite, silybum, and Al Sider, known in the West as Christ’s thorn.
Winter is quiet, except for carob tree honey and citrus honey in the Jordan Valley.
The Romans of Gadara “chose Umm Qais before us for its beautiful location”, Mr Saiyahin says.
They were also known to appreciate good honey.