Sarghoda: Under a dry, smoggy sky, a beekeeper is carried out carefully boxed with tens of thousands of bees of bees on the back of a truck.

Together, they travel 500 kilometers (about 300 miles) in an increasingly desperate hunt 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 are blooming,” Malik Hussain told Khan to AFPStanding in a field of orange trees whose flowers arrived weeks late in February and lasted only for a few weeks.

Pakistani beekeepers typically move seasonally to spare their charges suffocating hot or freezing cold.

The summers are spent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and winters in central Punjab.

But weather patterns that have been made unpredictable by climate change – combined with some of the worst pollution in the world – mean that beekeepers have to move more often and travel further.

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

Meanwhile, diminished rainfall could not clear the suffocating air and triggered drought warnings for farmers.

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

Honey varieties fall

The bees in the country’s 27,000 beekeepers once had different foliage fed with reliable rainfall and offer a rich source of nectar.

Their honey is used in local influenza reserves, dripped over sweets and given as gifts.

Since 2022, however, honey production has fallen 15%according to the government’s Honey Bee Research Institute (HBRI) in the capital Islamabad.

“Heavy rain and hail storms can ruin the flowers, and erratic rainfall and high temperatures during the winter flowering season can prevent them from blooming,” said Muhammad Khalid, a researcher at the institute.

“When the flowers disappear, the BI -population falls because they cannot find nectar, resulting in reduced honey production.”

Bees are threatened globally by changing weather patterns, intensive agricultural practices, changing land use and pesticides.

Their losses not only threaten the honey trade, but food security in general, with one -third of the world’s food production depending on bipollination, according to Food and Agriculture Organization.

Pakistan’s bees once produced 22 varieties of honey, but it has dropped to 11 as flowering seasons abbreviated. Three of the country’s four honey bee species are threatened.

“The places that used to be green for our bees to fly 30 years ago are no longer,” says 52-year-old honey trader Sherzaman Momaan, who speaks with tenderness about his winged charges.

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

His hive was almost exclusively wiped out by floods in 2010 in KP, but he believes deforestation is the most significant long -term change and threat.

Yousaf Khan and his brother, based in Islamabad, have produced honey for 30 years and moved short distances around neighboring areas to catch the best flowers.

“Now we go as far as Sindh (province) for warmer temperatures and to escape extreme weather conditions,” Khan told AFPReferring to areas up to 1,000 kilometers away.

“Bees are like babies, they need a good environment, good environment and proper food to survive.”

‘Fight and Kill’

Moving the bees comes with its own risks.

“If the weather is very hot or if the distance is too long, there is a chance that some bees could die. It has happened to my bees before,” Khan explained.

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

Moving so often is expensive for beekeepers in a country where fuel prices have risen dramatically in recent years.

And beekeepers seeking better weather can meet harassment if they create in areas without the permission of landlords.

On barren land outside Chamkanni in KP, yellow Badshah looks helpless when bees appear and disappear from dozens of boxes of a fruitless search for flowers.

“They fight and kill each other if the weather conditions do not fit them,” he said AFP.

Badshah, whose boxes were also washed away in floods in 2010, and again in 2022, has abandoned travel long distances.

“There’s nowhere to find. We don’t know where to go.”

Cool bees

Some hope is offered by new technology intended to keep bees cool, and addresses the problem of how extreme temperatures affect the insects – if not their food source.

Abdullah Chaudry, a former beekeeper, developed new hive with improved ventilation based on inspiration from other honey -producing nations dealing with rising temperatures, including Turkey and Australia.

Early signs suggest that the boxes improve production by approx. 10%.

“Extreme heat doesn’t make bees comfortable, and instead of doing honey they stay busy to cool themselves,” he said AFP at the Capital Beekeeping Research Center.

“These modern boxes are more spacious and have different spaces that give more room for the bees.”

However, the improved hives are just part of the adjustment puzzle, he acknowledges.

“It’s a running match,” Chaudry told AFP.