New Delhi, Feb. 10 -- The beekeepers rise early. They've come a long way to spend the winter months in the electric yellow mustard fields of Assam, and they have to make the trip worth it.

At dawn, they eat a simple breakfast and won't eat again until dusk. They'll spend all day checking the hives, smoking them to disperse the bees so they can collect thick golden honeycombs to be sold overseas.

It's a demanding job. Stings are a fact of life. At night, the workers settle in under blue tarpaulins and think of the families they've left behind, sometimes for months at a time, to move their wooden bee boxes to this place. But the harvest is a way to make ends meet.

"I earn an income, that's why I do business," said Karan Raj, a beekeeper ...