Two Yemenis are making handsome profit selling honey they claimed was harvested from the forests of Yemen. Aydros and his partner, Aymen, parked their pick-up van filled with aluminium cans full of honey along the busy Dhahran highway, attracting motorists. “This is the best honey in the world, it has strong medicinal use and nutritional value,” said Aydros, attending to buyers. “We plucked this honey from the deepest forests of Yemen. It is original, as you can see there are still a few dead honey bees in the honey combs inside the can.” One 4 kg can of Yemeni honey sells for SR500. The price of SR500 has been calculated to give customers some bargaining space, said Aymen. Buyers can negotiate up to the minimum of SR250 to SR300. They said this Yemeni honey is only available this particular month of the year. “This is original from the forests of Yemen. We hand plucked most of the hives from the tree ourselves; it is a very difficult process. A bee sting is sometimes poisonous, so we use a special technique to collect the honey and that is our trade secret,” Aydros said. Pure honey is considered to be a medicine for many illnesses, Saudis and expatriates are stopping by the highway to buy the products from the two enterprising Yemenis. “I am buying because this is original honey; it tastes very different from the honey you get in the supermarkets. It is expensive, but it is worth it,” said Abu Abdulrahman, a honey customer. Abdullah, another customer said that he too does not care about the high price of the Yemeni honey because of its quality. “I need pure honey for myself and my family. Honey has a lot of healing properties and it will keep me healthy if I drink it daily. I think that some of the honey sold in the supermarkets is made from sugarcane. Why compromise when you can get the best honey?” he said. “I think the high price is justified because it is natural. It is not even from a bee farm. It is plucked from the wild hives in nature and I think (Aydros and Aymen) must be compensated for their true labor,” said Naif, another buyer and lover of Yemeni honey. __
