The lid on a bee hive is carefully opened, revealing vertical slats oozing with golden honeycomb. There are about 40,000 bees in this colony and within moments they’re hovering in the air, forming a thick swarm whose collective droning drowns out the world around us. In the middle stands Mark AbouNassif, clad in PPE. As a bee keeper, he has been stung so many times that he developed an allergic reaction. Yet, experience has also taught him to remain calm.

Over the last six years AbouNassif, along with his brother Ralph and their friend Rabiah Traboulsi, has pushed the standards of best practices among honey producers in Lebanon. When they purchased their first hive in 2012 they were complete novices, but AbouNassif says that this was actually a boon.

“Because of the fact that we didn’t know anything [this] is why we had a fresh eye and we didn’t replicate the same practices and farming [as others]. We looked around and saw how nature worked and tried to work in sync with nature. For example, in Lebanon you have different altitudes and different types of flowers. There’s lots of biodiversity in Lebanon. We tried to work with this and what we discovered is that there’s flowers blossoming all year long. So we started to move our bee hives to our blossoms and we were able to produce honey even in winter.”

The ability to move their hives and ensure a constant source of nectar meant that they didn’t have to provide their bees with artificial supplements in the low season. This preference for a pure and natural end product has been at the heart of the business. Unlike many large scale honey producers in the country AbouNassif states that they never combine honey from multiple locations into single batches. Doing this would require that the product is heated, a process that reduces its quality. Furthermore, they keep their bees free of antibiotics and pesticides.

 Thanks in part to swelling demand from employment-boosting programs of donors like USAID, UNDP and the EU they were able to expand their operations to 250 hives in only two years.

By 2016 they scaled their operations by working with other artisans and key strategic partners. These included entities like the French Embassy, Sursock Museum and Presidential Palace, all of which were interested in keeping hives on their premises.

Subsequently, a new program was created that brought bee keeping to urban spaces like never before. “We offered a limit to less than 100 clients, and now we have bee hives everywhere in Lebanon. In private gardens, in guest houses, in hotels, in government institutions, in universities,” says AbouNassif.

Through the program, individuals pay $600 to host a hive for a season and have it maintained. In return, clients receive a minimum of 15 kgs of honey or up to 20 kgs if the yield is large enough. According to AbouNassif, the city can actually yield a higher quality of honey as the use of pesticides is much lower than in rural areas with large-scale agricultural fields.

On June 30, 2017, another major step was taken with the launching of a honey-themed restaurant and exhibition space, L'Atelier du Miel. The menu is designed so that nearly every item is flavored or sweetened by honey in some way.

Between all these initiatives AbouNassif has plenty to keep him busy. Soon, the eucalyptus season will end and the hives will be relocated to the thistles and wildflowers of the Lebanese mountains. Fortunately, monitoring nature’s progress is one of his favourite aspects of the job. “Honey is a window to all of nature,” observes AbouNassif.