Ethiopia's famed honeybees make slow recovery from war

In his stone house perched on a hill in northern Ethiopia, Amanuel Hiluf puts on his protective suit, carefully adjusting the hood and gloves. "We have to hurry up, it starts to be hot, and the bees will be upset," he says. In his garden in Hawidela, a village about an hour from Mekele, capital of the Tigray region, the beekeeper has about 40 hives from which clouds of bees are soon escaping. For nearly 20 years, his hives have produced white honey, a creamy, highly prized variety for which the northernmost region of Ethiopia is famous. Amanuel, 42, remembers a time when they produced "in abundance". But that was before the war in Tigray between federal government troops and Tigrayan rebels that raged from 2020 to 2022, which forced him to flee with his wife and children. "In this region, there was a lot of damage," he says, pointing to a hill from which shells were fired. When he returned a few months later, all his hives -- and his livelihood -- had been destroyed. Before the ...