Greek fires wreck thousands of beehives, imperilling honey production

The fires that scorched wide swathes of Greece in recent weeks have done extensive damage to beekeepers there, with surveys indicating more than 9,000 beehives have fallen victim to the flames.
The impact was especially hard on the island of Euboea, where more than 50,000 hectares burned, most of it pine forests.
The area previously produced about 65 per cent of Greece's annual pine honey.
"The destruction of the old pine forest is a great loss for Greek beekeeping - and will be for the next 30 years," Vassilis Douras, president of the Greek Beekeepers' Association, told the Greek news agency ANA.
It would take at least three decades for the forest to return to the way it was before the fires, Douras estimated.
The expert predicted a loss of 5,000 tons of honey or more per year and called for support from the state for the industry.
"Bees give us back much more through pollination in agricultural production and biodiversity than they give to beekeepers through honey," Douras told the ANA.
In neighbouring Turkey, fires in the honey-producing province of Muğla have caused yields to plummet up to 80 per cent.
It takes up to 25 years for newly planted pine trees to be suitable for honey production again, Dogan Kantarci, an ecology professor at Istanbul University, told dpa.