Namaste from Nepal.

It has been a very packed time for the Beekon team and associates. We have met with government officials, passionate students, inspiring researchers, and even a couple of elephants during our time in Chitwan. We shared our work at the International Beekeeping Conference in Rampur, Chitwan in partnership with the Agriculture and Forestry University to hundreds of international attendees representing dozens of countries. Every single country our attendees hailed from had seen climate change and flooding impact pollination services.

We were honoured to be hosted by the Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Agriculture.

In Nepal's Terai, beekeeping and agriculture share the landscape with rivers and monsoon flooding. For a beekeeper or farmer, preparing for rising water can mean moving colonies, finding transport, securing additional sites, and somehow doing all of the above before access becomes too dangerous, or too late. One group of beekeepers had told me how they moved over two hundred hives to keep their operation afloat during the flooding season. Behind those numbers is a significant amount of work, and the uncertainty of when, where, and how hard flooding will hit.

Pictured here are members of the Beekon team speaking with some beekeepers from Nepal adapting their apiaries to the world today.

When flooding destroys our ability to pollinate the food systems that keep us alive, we lose far more than a colony of bees or honey. Recovery continues long after the water recedes. This is what we mean when we describe pollination as infrastrucutre. We depend on it, and that dependence beckons reliability. The engineering of this infrastructure matters, as does everything required to make it work.

We met with incredible entrepreneurs and builders like Miss Janaki Chaudhary of Gurau Natural Essentials & Co. based out of Chitwan.

Our conversations and adventures spanned from Kathmandu to Chitwan, and we met many wonderful entrepreneurs and people along the way. Not to mention how absolutely delicious Nepalese dishes are. Pictured above is Miss Chaudhary, who has trained hundreds of beekeepers (70% of them women) how to augment their apiaries for additional income through the production of soaps, natural products, and more. These skills help support families, and entire communities.

For us, it reminds us of the practical question we started with: how do we help protect the pollination that keeps us alive and fed? Training, equipment, data management, and healthy colonies all take effort to establish. Climate resilience makes that effort last.

Busses took us to and from the University every day!

We presented our solutions in dozens of towns, advised on cover crops and pollination resilience, taught at the Apicultural Development Centre in Kathmandu, and met with more humanitarian agencies than I can remember the acronyms for. We are optimistic about Nepal's ability to adapt, and look forward to seeing its growing resilience in the future.