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The Beekeeper of Aleppo

By Andrew Taylor. Images by Andy Mintern.

11 Months Ago

Ryad Alsous smiles and shakes his head when you  mention the bestselling novel, The Beekeeper of Aleppo. “It’s a story,” he says. But there is a sadness in his smile, and we both know that it’s more than that.

“Syria is my home,” he says simply. “I was born there. So much of me is there — friends, relatives, the work that I did. My fingerprints are on the land.” Becoming a refugee — leaving everything behind, and starting again with nothing — leaves a lasting legacy of regret.

That’s a feeling that infuses every page of the novel. The book’s author, Christy Lefteri, is the child of Cypriot refugees. She spent two summers volunteering at a refugee centre in Athens. But when she wanted insights into the detailed experience of someone who had worked with bees in Syria, fled the country in the civil war, and then started a new life in England, she turned to Dr. Alsous.

When she was writing the book, which topped the fiction charts on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 2019, she spent several days with Ryad at his home in Huddersfield.

Back in Syria, as Dr. Ryad Alsous BSc, MA, PhD, he was Professor of Agriculture at Damascus University — not Aleppo — leading a research programme into beekeeping and environmental
pollution, and running a company that sold herbal and honey-based cosmetics. Back then, he had 500 beehives, producing around ten tonnes of honey a year

He had settled in the outskirts of Huddersfield, in West Yorkshire — a northern industrial town surrounded by spectacular moorland, heather, and wild flowers. Bee heaven.

And then a neighbour offered to drive him to a meeting of the Huddersfield Beekeeping Association. He began to meet local beekeepers, and word spread. A woman in Manchester contacted him to say that she had a hive full of bees that she didn’t want to look after any more.

“She came here, to my house, early one morning. We were all having breakfast, but she came in and talked for a while about her bees. She had such a lot to say about them — they were British black bees, not the European strain that are most common here, and she wanted to see that they were properly cared for. We talked for a long time, and then she told me that she thought I was the person to take them on.”

So he took up his beekeeping career again — and he rapidly found out that the British bees he had been given were hardier, more resistant to disease, and more productive than the strains from the Balkans, France, and elsewhere in Europe that were the most common at the time.

“In Wales and Ireland, and to some extent in Scotland, it was different — they still worked with British bees — but for years, people in England had been importing queen bees from Europe because they were cheaper, or because they thought they would produce more honey. But that was a mistake. Every year, I brought in more queen bees from Wales and Scotland, so now all my bees are genetically at least 50 per cent British. If I could get the money for artificial insemination equipment, I could make that 100 per cent — but that would cost maybe £4,000. Maybe one day!”

But he has done more than just produce honey for local shops and supermarkets — more, even, than spreading the word among the beekeeping community about the superior quality of British bees. Two years after he started his first hive in Yorkshire, he began the Buzz Project, helping other people — many of them refugees or jobseekers — into the hobby and business of keeping bees.

“We had a £5,000 grant at the start from the West Yorkshire Police Commissioner’s Safer Communities Fund to set up the project. That bought us hives and equipment and wax and bees. Since then, a lot of people who heard about what we are doing have supported us with equipment and money.”

Among their first members were three Syrian women, a Congolese refugee whose beekeeping experience included gathering wild honey in the jungle, and a Nigerian student.

A chance meeting with the mayor of Kirklees — the local authority that includes Huddersfield — brought more backing; the Canal and River Trust offered an ideal site for the Project’s hives, in a secluded valley by the Huddersfield Narrow Canal; established local beekeepers weighed in with their help and advice.

Today, the Buzz Project has seventeen working hives, and supporters all over Europe. “We have a weekly session with the hives, although people visit them much more often than that, checking if the bees are all right when there are storms or bad weather,” Ryad says. He works with other volunteers, sharing their skills and their knowledge. For many refugees, as it was for him, it’s the start of a new life in this country.

“I love running this project because it has so many benefits. Many refugees have come from high level careers and have lots to contribute, and this helps them gain skills and experience that can integrate them into the community,” he explains.

“We have a committee, an accountant to oversee our finances, and proper detailed records. That’s important so that when people want to support us, they can be confident where their money is going.”

“I am better off than many people. I am safe here, and my family is with me. But of course, I always miss Syria. I was born there. It is my home. It is a very beautiful country, the source of civilisation in the Middle East, and I have friends and relatives there who I miss. I miss my work at the university,” he says.

The bee colonies that he used to keep there have almost all collapsed — one more small, unnoticed tragedy in the wider and more terrible tragedy of a civil war that has torn the country apart. But here, slowly, he is rebuilding.

“I own bees because I love them very much. I always have. I worked hard in improving the numbers of Syrian bees and helping them to survive,” he says. “Now I am doing the same to promote British black bees.”

In The Beekeeper of Aleppo, the bees serve as a symbol of vulnerability and the fragility of life, but also determination and hope. Despite Ryad’s story serving simply as loose inspiration for the book’s narrative, perhaps any similarities are not with the plot, but with the concepts that are explored within it; of triumph over tragedy. It may not have occurred in quite the way that he’d dreamed, but the Beekeeper of Huddersfield has found his life’s calling.