By Hongji Kim and Minwoo Park
SANCHEONG COUNTY, South Korea, June 4 (Reuters) – Park Gyeong-je started tending beehives almost five decades ago, making it his livelihood because he liked spending time in nature. These days, however, the changing climate is making him question how much longer he and his fellow farmers can survive.
The 65-year-old runs a beekeeping farm in South Korea’s southern Sancheong county, but he is a migratory beekeeper, meaning he criss-crosses the country with his hives to chase seasonal flower blooms.
However, rising temperatures due to climate change are shortening seasons, causing flowers to bloom earlier and for shorter periods. The weather changes have also brought strong winds, which can make it harder for bees to find their way back to their hives.
Mites and new diseases have also hit the bee population.
“City people don’t notice seasons, but farmers feel them directly. Now it feels like only summer and winter remain,” Park told Reuters as he tended to his hives. He started with just eight back in 1979 and now has about 110. Together, they house roughly 8.8 million bees.
“Now, because of climate change, it is very hard for beekeeping farmers to survive,” Park said.
GLOBAL WORRIES
Studies have shown that climate change has harmed bees globally, impacting honey production and many other outdoor and indoor crops, such as apples, strawberries and tomatoes, which need the insects for pollination.
“A decline in the (bee population) ultimately affects the food supply,” said Yeh Sang-Wook, a climate and energy systems engineering professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “The most fundamental substructure of the ecosystem that constitutes our entire natural world is, in a sense, being destroyed.”
China was the world’s largest producer of natural honey in 2018, followed by Turkey and Argentina, according to data from the United Nations. Honey’s flavour reflects the different floral nectars the bees gather.
Most honey produced in South Korea is of the black locust variety, which is mild and floral, but there are also other types such as chestnut honey, which is less sweet and more earthy in flavour. In 2024, it exported 8.55 metric tons of natural honey, according to data from the World Integrated Trade Solution platform.
But Ministry of Agriculture data shows the number of hives for migratory beekeeping decreased by 14% to 813,279 from 2014 to 2023.
The total bee forage area in South Korea, meanwhile, was 146,000 hectares (360,000 acres) in 2020, about 70% less than it was in the 1970s to 1980s, according to data from the National Institute of Forest Science.
In January, researchers from Kangwon National University warned in a pilot study that pollination activity by South Korean bees could plunge by an average of 53.5% between 2040 and 2060 compared to current levels if climate change continued.
South Korea has joined other countries including Germany and Greece with new urban projects to boost bees, including rooftop gardens.
The South Korea Rural Development Administration, an agency under the agriculture ministry, told Reuters it was planning to breed stronger honeybees that can withstand climate change, plant trees that are attractive to bees because of their abundant nectar and introduce ‘smart beekeeping’ technologies.
MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE
Park moves his bees around the country stacked on the back of three trucks and a van, travelling mostly in the evening while the bees sleep.
Beekeepers exchange information about where flowers are in bloom and where conditions are good to figure out the best honey-making routes, he said.
“In the past there were big climate differences between southern and central regions, so it was very good for producing honey. But now, because of global warming, flowers seem to bloom all at once nationwide,” he said.
Once Park finds the flowers and gets the neighbours’ consent, he releases the bees, wearing a hat with a mesh veil as he watches them extract the flowers’ nectar to take back to the hives and turn into honey.
But while Park used to make four trips across South Korea to harvest black locust honey, as a result of premature blooming he now makes only two and honey production takes place on only one to two months of the year.
“Compared to the 1990s or early 2000s, the honey harvest has decreased by about 70%,” he said. “In the past it took about 20 to 23 days and we harvested 8 to 9 times. Now we can only do so 4 to 5 times.”
Farmers have been using artificial methods to try and increase the bee population but Park said he hoped institutions like South Korea’s agriculture ministry could research and supply technology to help bees survive the winter better as well as improve the management of temperature differences.
The ministry said it was investing a total of 48.6 billion won ($32.3 million) through to 2030 for research aimed at restoring bee health.
The number of households running bee hives plunged by more than a third from 2005 to the end of 2024, but Park is determined to carry on. He intends to expand the scale of his beekeeping operation by introducing smart farming systems including cameras inside the hives to provide real-time updates on the bee colonies’ growth.
His second daughter has also taken an interest in beekeeping and he is training her to take over the business one day.
“So as long as I stay healthy, I will keep beekeeping until the day I die. And even if I were to die and be born again as a human, I would still want to be a beekeeper,” Park said.
($1 = 1,506.2400 won)
(Reporting by Hongji Kim and Minwoo Park; Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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