Latakia-SANA
The Directorate of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform in Lattakia Governorate is working on implementing an integrated project plan for rooting the Syrian bee breed (Siyafi and Al-Ghanami) prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform through the creation of a new center in the Al-Rahmiyah area in the countryside of the governorate in cooperation with the Syria branch of the Arab Beekeepers Union.
The head of the Prevention Department in the Latakia Agriculture Directorate, Yasser Muhammad, explained to SANA reporter that a new bee breeding center has been established in the Al-Rahmiyah area in Lattakia countryside, at a distance of between 5 and 6 km from all the apiaries in the area, with the aim of establishing an isolated area for the rooting of Syrian bees, where they are pollinated from Each other under the supervision of a specialized team that will soon tour all governorates to bring bee breeds very close to the formal and anatomical specifications of the pure local Syrian bee breed, according to the specifications set by the specialists at Tishreen University, scientific research centers, the Department of Prevention and a group of beekeepers experts.
And Muhammad indicated that the Syrian bees are characterized by strength and ability to adapt to the area in which they live and resistance to diseases, but the (Siafi) type is ferocious, unlike the (Ghanami) bees, which have a medium productivity of Syrian honey, but they were subjected to cross-breeding through the introduction of some beekeepers to foreign queens to improve honey production illegally without the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture.
Muhammad explained that these new queens gave hybrid bee strains that increased the production of Syrian honey, but at the same time, they are weak and carry multiple diseases and are unable to resist them. This indicates that experience has proven that the queens that were introduced to Syria from Lebanon and Iraq on the basis that they are resistant to diseases and have high productivity. They were not in our region, and the evidence is that some of these new strains carried diseases such as (fosina and bee ticks) last season, as soon as temperatures and climatic disturbances decreased in the region.
Muhammad indicated that the Syrian bees crossed through the new strains, and the local strains mixed with the new strains and produced a hybrid mixed strain.
He pointed out that the fierce Syrian bees (Ghanami and Siafi) are adapted to our region, and the task of the work team is currently focused on searching for them in all governorates and bringing the closest strains of them to the Al-Rahmiyah Center and pollinating them together to derive local strains down to the authentic Syrian bees that were in our region.
With regard to the stages of work reached by the Syrian Bee Rooting Center in the Al-Rahmiyah area, Muhammad indicated that three prefabricated rooms have been set up and work in them continues in parallel with the work of the research team tasked with bringing bee hives that are very close to the specifications of the original Syrian bees to achieve our ambition to obtain an improved breed of it In a well-studied scientific way, it is highly productive and resistant to disease.
Head of the Bee and Silk Division in the Directorate of Lattakia Agriculture, Eng. Jamal Yassin, explained that work is continuing to prepare the site of the new center, put umbrellas and implement the sanitary work necessary to work within the center in parallel with the tours to collect samples from bees through a technical and scientific committee in the governorate and send them to the autopsy at Tishreen University to match Anatomical and phenotypic specifications of the Syrian bee.
The specialized committee from Lattakia includes an expert in beekeeping and honey production, Dr. Abdullah Hatoum, Dr. Malik Omran and Eng. Jamal Yassin, head of the Bee and Silk Division at the Directorate of Agriculture.
Nabil Ali
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