Beekeeping Rabi Conference (25 September 2008)

1. BeekeepingRabi Conference (25 September 2008)

2. Why Beekeeping ? • To enhance productivity of agricultural/ horticultural crops • To increase income of the farmers • To generate additional employment

3. Benefits of Beekeeping • Bees help in cross pollination thus they increase the productivity of crops. • Proper utilization of natural resources. • Unemployed youth can start this business with minimal funds. • 3.0 lakhs man-days to maintain, 10,000 Bee colonies. • 73,000 man-days to manufacture appliances / equipments. • Net income from 100 Bee colonies is around Rs. 1.70 lakhs/annum • It helps in rural development and promotes small village industry.

4. Increase in Yield Due to Bee Pollination

5. Increase in Yield Due to Bee Pollination

6. National Bee Board (NBB) • In view of importance of beekeeping NBB restructured in June, 2006, by DAC, under the Chairmanship of Secretary (A&C) with public-private participation. • Main objective is overall development of beekeeping in India by popularizing state of art technologies relating to nucleus stock production, capacity building and training of bee breeders and beekeepers, processing and quality control of bee products, etc. • The NBB will be responsible for promoting scientific beekeeping in the country and advise Government on the subject. • MC of NBB consists of 15 members apart from the Executive Director, Ex-Officio member of MC.

7. Programmes for development of Beekeeping (Proposed for implementation by NBB).

8. Components may be implemented by the State Governments / State Designated Agencies: • Development of infrastructural facilities like collection, storage, marketing centers, etc. • Farmers / Bee Keepers’ trainings at grass root levels, • Distribution of Bee colonies • Distribution of Bee hives and Bee equipments • Promotional activities at village / Block / Tehsil / District / State levels • Migratory Bee keeping

9. Activities conducted / being conducted by NBB during 2006-7 & 2007-08

10. Status of Beekeeping in India. • About 14.00 lakh Colonies by 2.50 lakh Beekeepers • Employment to 1.50 lakh persons. • Annual honey Production 52,000 tonnes (54.15% from domesticated & 45.85% from wild) • Apis cerana & Apis mellifera both are in practice. • Avg. yield of honey 20.11kgs./hive. • Value of Export of honey appr. 250 crores. • Major markets Germany, USA, UK, Japan, France, Italy, Spain.

11. World scenario of Beekeeping • About 50 million bee colonies, mostly, Apis mellifera, maintained all over the world. • World production of honey estimated 13.88 lakh M.T. • 15 countries in world account for 90% of world honey production. • Major honey producing countries are China, USA(85000MTs), Mexico, Argentina, Ukraine, Turkey, Russia & India. • China is only Asian country producing nearly 1.6 lakh M. T. of honey, 12800 M.T. of beeswax against 43400 M. T. of world production. • China also produces 1000 M. T. of pollen and 800 M.T. of royal jelly and biggest exporter of honey, beeswax and other bee products. • 70 lakh A.mellifera bee colonies and 30 lakh A.cerana bee colonies in China and they have a plan to increase this number to 5 times in next few decades.

12. Constraints in Beekeeping • Lack of • infrastructure for producing genetically superior queen bees for supply to beekeepers; • technical knowledge for efficient management of bee colonies for higher honey yield; • awareness about yield increase in crops by BK through pollination; • research for disease management & control; • financial institutional support • consumer awareness about honey and its products; • Poor quality control for production of honey; • De-forestation; • Indiscriminate use of insecticides, pesticides, weedicides etc.; and • Global warming & unforeseen changes in climatic conditions.

13. Opportunities: • Beekeeping (BK) industry does not requires sophisticated technology, high capital investment or infrastructure. • Diversified Agro- Climatic conditions provide great potential and opportunities for development of BK. • Potential & requirement for 15 million Bee colonies which will provide employment to 16 lakh persons. • BK industry has great self-help potential for the rural people, tribals, marginal and small farmers, land-less labour, etc. and great opportunities as under: • Honey has great food value and provides cash income; • Beeswax which is twice as much costly as honey is in great demand; • Other products, viz., bee-collected pollen, propolis, bee-venom and royal jelly are several times costlier than honey and beeswax; • About one million people will get part time employment without displacing them from their homes and without sacrificing their main occupation; • Providing bee pollination services to farmers for increasing crop production and productivity of honeybees – A double benefit service; and Processing and value added products of Bee- products.

14. Thrust Areas • Dev. of quality Nucleus Stock for A. cerana & A. mellifera. • Queen rearing and colony multiplication • Management of Colony for crops pollination • Control of bee diseases • Awareness about role of honeybees in increasing crop yield through pollination • Awareness about NBB and its membership • Honey Testing Laboratory • Backward and forward linkages for overall development of beekeeping in the area. • Designing proper area specific crop rotations for making available flora and fauna round the year. • Designing of floral maps/gharts • Planning for intensive orchards for diversified flora and fauna in the area. • Setting up of demonstration-cum- training centres. • Setting up of honey processing plants (HPP) & coll. centre. • Adoption of integrated approach in implementation of activities. • Integration of various schemes of Beekeeping and crop production.

15. Convergence of Programmes/ Facilities • Convergence of the Schemes / facilities of Deptt. of Agril., Hort., Forest and Social forestry and other line Deptts./ agencies, viz; NFSM, ISOPOM, RKVY,SGSY,etc. Pooling of resources of various schemes/ deptt. is required. • Involvement of farmers associations/ cooperative/ societies/ gram vikas samities etc. • Convergence between beekeepers, crop growers/ farmers and field officials. • Identification of nodal/ coordinating agencies. • Linkage between beekeepers, manufacturers of bee equipments , buyers/exporters of honey and its products.

17. Thanks.