Beekeepers broaden flower hunt amid changing conditions

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Sargodha: A beekeeper in Punjab, under the sky, carefully stack boxes with tens of thousands of flies on the back of a truck in Punjab.

They travel together, traveling 500 km (around 300 miles), which endanger the production of honey with climate change and pollution, chasing favorable weather, clean air and open flowers.

“We move the boxes according to where the weather is good and flowers open,” Malik Hussein Khan said while talking to AFP in the field of orange trees. This year, the flowers arrived at the end of the weeks at the end of February and faded within a few weeks.

Pakistani bees associates usually move into the weather to protect their charges from heat or freeze the cold.

The summer is spent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and in Central Punjab.

But the weather samples are unexpectedly made by climate change – combined with the worst pollution in the world – this means that bees should move more often and travel more.

This winter was marked by increasing, hazardous levels, which the government declared national destruction. Research has found that air pollution can make flowers difficult for flies.

Low rain, in the meantime, failed to clear the wind and mobilized drought warnings for farmers.

Khan said, “This winter, at that time, fog and fog killed about half of my flies because they could not fly. It was rarely raining.”

Honey Types Plut

The bees of 27,000 flour of this country were once fed to different plants with reliable rain, which presented a rich source of nectar.

Their honey is used in the treatment of local flu, drizzle on sweets, and as a gift.

However, since 2022, according to the government’s Honey Bees Research Institute (HBRI) in the capital Islamabad, honey production has decreased by 15 %.

“Heavy rains and hail storms can eliminate flowers,” said Mohammad Khalid, a researcher at the institute, and unusual rainfall and high temperatures can prevent them from opening in winter flowers. “

“When the flowers disappear, the population of the flies decreases as they cannot find the nectar, which in turn reduces the production of honey.”

Bees are globally threat by changing weather patterns, deep farming methods, changes in land use and pesticides.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, their loss is not only the honey trade, but also the risk of food protection, which depends on the germination of the bees.

The bees of Pakistan once produced 22 varieties of honey, but it has been 11 as short of the flower seasons. Three species of four honey bees in the country have been jeopardized.

“The places that were green for flying our flies 30 years ago are no longer anymore,” says Moman, 52, says 52 -year -old Honey Trader Sherzman Moman.

“We didn’t roam as much as we do now.”

The 2010 floods in KP were almost completely eliminated, but they believe that forest harvesting is the most important long -term change and threat.

Yusuf Khan and his brother, who have been based in Islamabad, have been preparing honey for 30 years, and the short distance around the neighboring areas to catch the best flowers. Transfer.

“Now, we go to Sindh to avoid hot temperatures and extreme conditions of the weather,” Khan told AFP.

“Honey bees are like children, they need a good environment, good environment and proper food to survive.”

‘Fight and Kill’

Transferring bees come with its own risks.

Khan explained, “If the weather is too hot, or if the distance is too long, it is likely that some honey bees will die. Before that it happened to my flies.”

On long trips, they should also be fed artificial food because they cannot produce honey while traveling.

In recent years, where fuel prices have increased dramatically, it is often expensive for bees to move.

And bees’ peers may face harassment in search of better weather if they stand in areas without the permission of the landlords.

On the barren soil outside the Shimani in KP, Gul King looks helplessly when the bees appear and disappear from dozens of boxes on the inevitable search in search of flowers.

He told AFP, “If they do not match the weather conditions, they fight and kill each other.”

The king, whose boxes were also washed into the flood in 2010, and then in 2022, left long distance travel.

“Can’t find anywhere. We don’t know where and where to go.”

Cool bees

Some hopes are presented by new technology that aims to keep bees cool, solving the problem how extremely affects pests – if they are not a source of food.

Abdullah Chaudhry, a former bees keeper, has developed new hives with better ventilation based on the rising temperature -productive countries, including Turkey and Australia.

Preliminary signs suggest that the production of boxes improves around 10 % of production.

He told AFP at the Capital Protection Research Center, “The extreme heat does not make the bees comfortable and instead of making honey, they are busy cooling themselves.”

“These modern boxes are more spacious, and there are different compartments that give bees more space.”

Better hives are just one part of the puzzle, though, they recognize.

“This is an ongoing war,” Chaudhry told AFP.