Gaza beekeeper rebuilds hives on rooftop after war losses

Gaza beekeeper Ibrahim al-Dabba has moved his remaining hives to a rooftop in Gaza City after he said the Israel-Hamas war destroyed most of the territory’s beekeeping sector.

Al-Dabba, who heads the Beekeepers Cooperative in the Gaza Strip, said Gaza had more than 40,000 beehives and more than 450 beekeepers before the war. He said more than 1,000 families had made a living from beekeeping.

“The war came and destroyed the beekeeping sector by more than 95 percent because most beekeepers were near the border areas,” he said.

Al-Dabba said he lost about 400 hives that he had kept on agricultural land east of Gaza City. He moved roughly 35 remaining hives to the roof of a residential building in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood.

He said he could not return the bees to their former location because the area had been destroyed and was under Israeli military control. He also said beekeepers lacked essential supplies because importing equipment was not permitted.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 73,300 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

A ceasefire has been in effect since October, but bloodshed has continued. Israel says it controls more than 60 percent of the Gaza Strip.