BINNABARI, India (AP) — The beekeepers rise early. They’ve come a long way to spend the winter months in the electric yellow mustard fields of Assam, and they have to make the trip worth it.At dawn, they eat a simple breakfast and won’t eat again until dusk. They’ll spend all day checking the hives, smoking them to disperse the bees so they can collect thick golden honeycombs to be sold overseas.It’s a demanding job. Stings are a fact of life. At night, the workers settle in under blue tarpaulins and think of the families they’ve left behind, sometimes for months at a time, to move their wooden bee boxes to this place. But the harvest is a way to make ends meet.AdvertisementAdvertisement“I earn an income, that’s why I do business,” said Karan Raj, a beekeeper from Bihar.Migratory beekeepers have moved their colonies of bees from field to field for decades in India, following the bloom of flowers to help farmers with pollination and collecting the honey.The practice is relatively new but growing in Assam, where local and migratory beekeepers alike are turning to the farms in the region to support what they say is a growing demand for honey. But climate change threatens all that. Beekeepers are persisting in the face of floods, more powerful monsoons and extreme heat, as well as development that changes the landscapes bees rely on.“If the weather is fine, the production will be fine. If the weather spoils, then there is no production. Weather has an effect. The weather needs to be good,” said Ranjeet Kumar, another beekeeper.AdvertisementAdvertisementExtreme weather affects bee behavior, honey productionAssam, nestled east of Bangladesh and south of the Himalayas, is …
