Winter and Moving beehives

 Written by: Mir Aqa Etibar

Most beekeepers do not spend four seasons in one place, because each place has one season of flowers and at the end of the flowering, they have to leave the area and go to a place where it is just the beginning of the flower season that bees can prepare food for themselves, but some beekeepers have trouble moving beehives from one place to another. AEPO’s writer/producer has talked to some beekeepers about this issue.

Muhammad Usman, a resident of Ghorband district, Parwan province says, “When we move beehives from one area to another, we have to use transport. Once I was moving my beehives in the winter to Pakistan. They stopped us on the border for more than 24 hours and did not allow us to release the bees, and due to the lack of oxygen and water, about 150 thousand bees died, and we faced about 400 thousand Afghanis loss.”

Muhsin, a resident of Laghman province says, “Once we had to move the beehives but we did not know about that the way is so long. It took more than 17 hours in a vehicle that we reached our destination. When we opened the hives, almost 30 beehives’ bees had died and we faced a loss of 750 thousand Afghanis.”

What do the beekeepers think about the causes of this issue?

Mateen, a resident of Paghman district, Kabul province says, “We were moving beehives by vehicle and we were thinking that the destination is close but the way was so long that when we reached the area, most bees had died in the beehives.”

Muhammad Usman says, “The cause of the death of our bees was the hot weather because bees are not resistant to high temperature.”

How do beekeepers carry beehives safely?

Muhammad Usman says, “When we saw that some bees died of hot weather and thirst, we put a water container in each hive and fasten a wooden stick inside the hives for the sitting of bees on it to prevent sinking in the water during drinking.”

 Muhsin says, “As we had the experience of dying bees in hot weather, when we were moving beehives the next time, we were splashing freshwater on beehives and if possible, we put some ice piece inside the hives time by time to keep the weather normal inside the hives and to produce more oxygen.”