In the mountains of northeast Peru, a group of women beekeepers have plucked millions of bees from the jaws of death and saved their own livelihoods with the help of UN climate funding.
The women not only rescued their hives from extreme weather events linked to climate change, but built a thriving honey business.
Chilal de la Merced, a village of some 800 souls perched at over 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) in the Andes, in Peru’s Cajamarca region, has been battered in recent years by recurring heavy rains, droughts, frosts and hail storms linked to a changing climate and warming oceans.
The weather has played havoc with the bees’ ability to forage for nectar and pollen.
In early 2022, the rains were so heavy that they didn’t venture out of the hive at all, and began to starve.
“When we checked the hives, we found the boxes full of dead …