Beekeeping and Honey Production in Türkiye

“As a photojournalist, I often question things and strive to highlight the relationship between animal uses and culture. For this reason, I chose locations where I could observe different cultures and document the stories of animals living in captivity or slaughtered through animal husbandry activities in various regions of Türkiye.” ― Havva Zorlu, animal photojournalist

In the warmer months, bees collect nectar from flowers, delivering it back to their hive for worker bees to process into nectar and honey. Worker bees place this honey inside the hive’s honeycomb cells, covering it with a beeswax seal for preservation. Honey is an indispensable food source for bees and is stocked in the hive to ensure winter survival when outside pollen and nectar sources are scarce or non-existent. Despite this fact, most of the honey that bees store for themselves is taken by us, humans.

Beekeepers remove most of the bees’ honey by first removing the frames containing the honeycomb from the hive, then removing the caps from the honeycomb, and finally spinning the frames in an extractor to expel the honey. During winter, beekeepers feed the bees with artificial foods such as pollen cakes, syrup made from refined sugars, or commercially prepared syrups or fondants to replace the bees’ honey.

Though producers market honey as a natural product, many apiary production models medicate the bees and utilize food supplements. Some also use modern technology to artificially inseminate certain queen bee species to control genes and the breeding process for increased honey yield.

A honey bee queen can live for up to five years, as long as she is free from disease, though some beekeepers actively replace the queen after only one or two years. During this time, the queen must stay in the hive for honey production to continue, so producers cut off one-third of her wings to minimize the chances of her departing. Worker bees born in the spring or summer when the hive is most active may only live for two to six weeks since they are so busy collecting nectar and pollen, feeding larvae and producing honeycomb.

“Animal abuse and exploitation are common everywhere, at all times. Therefore, as animal photojournalists, we have many stories to tell.” ― Havva Zorlu

Bees are among the animal species we know the least about. That may make it hard to relate to them, to empathize with them. But does this make what we do to them any less of a violation?

Through these compelling and informative visuals, Havva strives to ignite our curiosity and bring us closer to these small but mighty creatures. She asks us to consider bees in a new light–not just from the lens of the precious food source they produce.

Turkiye, 2023. Havva Zorlu / We Animals Media

Explore more of Havva’s Fellowship visuals via the We Animals Media stock platform. We’ll be publishing more visuals and stories from Havva’s Fellowship portfolio throughout the year.

Data sources: Hellenic Bee Research / USDA Foreign Agricultural Service / National Library of Medicine / Science Direct