Buzzing bees are disappearing in Morocco, Egypt

No bees on earth means no pollination of trees and plants and consequently no reproduction of plants. No bees means no honey, which provides humans with several healthy minerals and vitamins. Unfortunately, bee populations recently started disappearing in several countries around the globe like Morocco and Egypt due to climate change-related impacts of fluctuating weather temperature, poor rains and forest fires, besides other harmful factors from humans like the use of pesticides.

Morocco and Egypt suffer from the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a disease when the number of the bee workers in a hive is declining or disappearing, leaving the queen alone behind or the nurse bees are not enough to care for the immature bees, as has been identified by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Since November 2021, Morocco suffers from this phenomenon due to the climate change impact of drought caused by a decline in rain precipitation across the Kingdom. As a result, high temperatures and lack of rain affect the abundance of pastures on which bees feed. Moreover, the crisis deepened this month following the wave of fires that swept through vast areas of the country. 

These factors caused the rate of bee honey production in some areas to decrease by about 75 percent, Moroccan newspaper Hespress reported in July. Also, the Moroccan village of Inzerki, where the oldest collective beehive in the world was established in 1850, did not escape the CCD phenomenon, and some beekeepers had to abandon their job due to the climate change impacts and lack of work, AFP reported on April 3. 

In the beginning, the Moroccan National Food Safety Office (ONSSA) announced in January that CCD is a new phenomenon that hit the country, ruling out – as per its preliminary results of checking 23,000 bee hives – the reason could be a disease.

“The disappearance of bee colonies in some areas is a new phenomenon linked to several reasons, including climatic, environmental and biological factors and beekeeping practices,” the ONSSA said in a statement.

However, the Moroccan government indicated that it has designed a program to conduct a treatment campaign against the varroosis disease [infection by Varroa mites that feed off the bees and sometimes carry viruses that damage the hives]. 

The Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests (MAPMDREF) said in a statement on January 31 that it has allocated 130 million dirhams to take immediate measures, including supporting the bee breeders to help them reconstruct the infected beehives by distributing new bee colonies and conducting a treatment campaign against varroosis.

Bee breeding is a vital source of living for more than 36,000 Moroccan breeders, with more than 910,000 beehives. A total of 7,960 tons of honey was produced in 2019, worth 822 million dirhams, while 2,200 tons of honey was imported in 2019, according to data of from the MAPMDREF’s official website.

Moroccan bees feed on flowers in eucalyptus forests, sunflowers, and natural mountain plants like thyme, dagmus, rosemary, lavender, and wormwood. Morocco has three bee subspecies. The first subspecies is Apis mellifera intermissa, which exists in the mountainous areas and is adapted to the dry climate. The second one is Apis mellifera sahariensis, which adapts to the date palm trees and some Saharan flowers. Meanwhile, the third one is the giant honey bee, which exists in northern parts of Morocco, especially in the rural areas.

However, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) – an international organization that provides science-based solutions for countries across the non-tropical dry areas – said that “the bee fauna of Morocco remains largely underexplored.” The ICARDA report that was published in May 2019 said that 938 subspecies have been explored by its team in Morocco and pushed the country to be the second largest country in Africa for bee diversity, following South Africa. The report also indicated that Morocco has been suffering from a deterioration of biodiversity since the last decade, which would consequently affect bees.

According to a study published in December 2020 in the US National Library of Medicine, about 70% of the bee population of Morocco “consists of widespread palaearctic species. Only 18% of Moroccan species recorded are restricted to North Africa, and 8% are Moroccan single-country endemics (81 species).”

To save one of the main endangered agricultural financial resources for the Kingdom, a national campaign has been programmed to treat about 900,000 beehives against varroosis, said Minister of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests Mohamed Seddiki at the parliament in May, as was reported by Moroccan website Agadirino.

In addition to this, the government will start disbursing compensation for those who have been affected by the phenomenon of the disappearance of bees starting next August, announced Siddiqi at the parliament on July 25. He added that the number of those who could benefit from the compensation could reach 500 bee breeders. 

On Saturday, a campaign of distributing hives to the bee breeders harmed by fires started as part of an urgent financial 8-million-dirham relief allocated to the affected people in Larache, Tetouan, and Ouezzane provinces in the northern part of the country, Madar 21 reported on July 21.

Bee deaths in Egypt

Morocco is not the only African country that suffers from the CCD phenomenon, as countries like Egypt, besides different parts around the globe, recently witnessed “a sudden unexplained disappearance of bee colonies”, the UN FAO reported on July 1.

“Several factors are being blamed, such as insufficient rainfall, poor bee nutrition resulting from lack of pasture, the health of hives and bee husbandry practices,” the report read.

In Egypt, bee breeders suffered a loss of beehives recently. In Egypt’s Delta city of El Mahala El Kobra in Gharbiya governorate, some bee breeders have been exposed to severe losses due to CCD.

“I had 150 hives and lost 120 of them,” said a bee breeder in Beshbeish village in El Mahala, Abdel Moneim Daraz, a member of one of 25,000 families working in bee breeding. Speaking to Jusoor Post, he said that many farmers abandoned bean cultivation after the crops were hit by broomrape, a small parasitic plant that depends on other plants for nutrients, and the absence of cultivated beans led to the unavailability of bean flowers on which bees feed. He also said that the spread of greenhouses, which are being sprayed intensively with pesticides, also participated in killing the busy bees.

Egypt has 2 million beehives nationwide, and a total of 30,000 tons of honey is being produced annually, including 3,200 tons of honey exported abroad, according to the Ministry of Agriculture’s data from May 2022.

However, Daraz managed to compensate this loss to a certain degree by buying more healthy hives from other breeders, who rescued theirs by transferring the beehives to a safer place in Wadi El Natrun in Beheira Governorate, where there are no greenhouses and weather is warmer than El Mahala El Kobra, especially during winter.

“Climatic changes undoubtedly have an effect on the bees and their hives, because the seasons of planting and flowers have changed. Climatic changes may have an effect on causing new insect infestations and the re-emergence of harmful pests to the beehives such as varroosis, where recent climatic changes have led to its spread,” Khaled Ayyad, professor at the Egyptian Agricultural Research Center, told Jusoor Post.

The use of urban pesticides to combat diseases caused to flowers by climate change may cause death to bees and consequently lead to the collapse of their colonies, he added.

Ayyad continued that saving the hives from collapse also depends on the breeders and their ways of breeding, as some beekeepers may resort to feeding the bees sugar and yeast in the absence of plant flowers, in addition to adopting practices that reduce pressure on the bees inside the hives by replacing the old queens with young ones and by placing wax inside the hives.

“Every gram of wax produced by the bees in the hive makes bees need to feed on 5 kilograms of honey,” he said, adding that placing wax could reduce pressure on bees and consequently save a large amount of honey to be sold.

It is not the first time that bee breeders in Egypt face such a loss. In 2019, some breeders lost 50% of their bees due to systemic pesticides, mobile networks, and the incurable disease of nosemosis in the honey bee (Apis mellifera), which feeds on bee’s fats, Scientific American reported on February 5, 2020.

Bees in Egypt also suffer from symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s disease, where bees could not return to their hives after pollinating, said Mohamed Fathallah, head of the Bee Research Department of the Egyptian Plant Protection Institute, in media comments to Al Masry Al Youm newspaper on January 13.

He revealed that the Ministry of Agriculture’s Pesticides Committee restricted the use of the neonicotinoid group of pesticides, prohibiting their uses on open crops, only to be used in greenhouses and during periods of non-flowering, as these pesticides have a negative impact on the disappearance of bees.

On World Bee Day 2022, which fell on May 22, the FAO this year warned of declining pollination services in many parts of the world due to a decline in the bee population.

“Bees, pollinators, and many other insects are declining in abundance due to unsustainable agricultural practices, pesticides, pests and pathogens, habitat destruction, and climate crisis. We must act collectively to support, restore and enhance the role of bees, pollinators and beekeeping,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu in a video message on May 20.