This year, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) examines how a decades-old legacy of DDT use has imperilled Tajikistan’s bees and the actions being taken to reverse this trend.
From the 1970s to the early 1990s, Daria Babenkova’s family was one of many in Tajikistan who relied on bees for their livelihood – shipping their hives across the country’s mountains and prairies as they sought out the flower meadows that would yield the finest honey.
“Relying solely on honey production did not guarantee a secure income so my family began taking on pollination jobs as they travelled,” Daria says. “Farmers would pay them to camp around their fields for a few days at a time so the bees would pollinate their crops.”