The Carpathian Mountains are famed for their exquisite honey, with its special flavours drawn from a diverse flora and a beekeeping tradition that goes back through the centuries.
Now a Ukrainian region of the mountains is becoming known for something very different: as a source of resilience and collaboration during conflict.
When war broke out in 2022, a group of beekeepers in Luhansk in the country’s east found themselves near the frontlines. With their lives in danger, and their hives lost or damaged, their only option was to flee.
Igor Kovtunenko, who had produced organic honey in Luhansk for 15 years, was offered a lifeline by a beekeeping friend from Velikiy Rozhen village on the other side of the country in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of the Carpathians, who invited him and his family to move there.
“It was and still is a safer place to live, so I hit the road leaving my hives and home behind and hoping to restart my business,” says Igor, who is the third generation of beekeepers in his family.
Several fellow displaced beekeepers from Luhansk made the same journey and were helped by their contemporaries in the west with equipment, bees for breeding and land for their apiaries. Within months they had registered as a new cooperative.
Their story is captured in a video which tells how with support from the Peace Dividend Initiative (PDI) in late 2022 launched a project to increase honey production levels from the current annual one ton (about 2,000 jars) and support their efforts to export the ‘Hike Hive’ product to Europe.
The project will aim first at high-end retailers in EU and Switzerland, who it is hoped will be attracted by the honey’s unusual packaging in beeswax jars.
It is also laying the groundwork for long-term social cohesion in the post-war Ukraine.
Ivan Saschuk, one of the Carpathian beekeepers at the heart of the cooperative, says: “We share our knowledge with beekeepers from the east, and they teach us ‘the Luhansk way’. We all cooperate together. For all of us, beekeeping isn’t just a profession, it’s a way of life.”
