Plan B: Pakistani beekeepers widen pursuit of flowers – Pakistan

The beekeepers typically move seasonally to spare their charges stifling heat or freezing cold.

Under a dry, smoggy sky, a beekeeper in Punjab carefully loads boxes filled with tens of thousands of bees onto the back of a truck.

Together they will travel 500 kilometres (around 300 miles) in an increasingly desperate chase to find flowering plants, clean air and moderate temperatures for honey production as climate change and pollution threaten the industry.

“We move the boxes according to where the weather is good and the flowers bloom,” Malik Hussain Khan told AFP, standing in a field of orange trees whose blossoms arrived weeks late in February and lasted only for a few weeks.

This photograph taken on Jan 30, 2025 shows Malik Hussain Khan (R), a beekeeper, checking beehives in a honeybee farm at Lak Mor village in Sargodha district of Punjab. — AFP

The beekeepers typically move seasonally to spare their charges stifling heat or freezing cold.

Summers are spent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and winters in central Punjab.

But weather patterns made unpredictable by climate change — coupled with some of the worst pollution in the world — mean beekeepers must move more frequently and travel further.

This photograph taken on Jan 30, 2025 shows a farmer along with his camel cart walking through mustard fields near a honeybee farm at Lak Mor village in Sargodha district of Punjab province. — AFP

This winter was marked by soaring, hazardous smog levels that the government declared a national disaster. Research has found air pollution can make it harder for bees to locate flowers.

Diminished rainfall, meanwhile, failed to clear the choking air and triggered drought warnings for farmers.

“Almost half of my bees died when the smog and fog hit this winter because they could not fly. There was hardly any rain,” said Khan, who moved his bees as frequently as every few weeks in January and February.

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