Training on Bee farming – the new venture of CSIR-NEIST under STINER

Honeybee has a well-known role in pollination, maintaining plant diversity and also increase yield of crops. Bee pollinate about one-third of the crops we eat. Among the honeybees, Apis mellifera, A. cerana, A. dorsata, A. florea are highly effective as pollinator. People have been managing honeybee since last 4500 years. Apis mellifera and Apis cerana are maintained commercially for crop pollination as well as honey production. Germany, Japan and United States are the prime importer of honey and China dominates almost 40% of world honey market. India produces about 70,000 tons of honey every year. As per 2014 data, around 1,511,000 tons of honey was produced worldwide and China alone produced 474,000 tons of honey. European Union, which is 2nd largest producer, produces about 250,000 tons of honey with 17 million bee hives. Natural honey export of different countries rose to US$ 2.4 billion in 2017. The whole process of honey production and bee cultivation provides employment to millions of people. Although, North East India has wide floral resources and plant diversity with a very congenial climatic condition for production of honey but the region has yet to prove the potentiality of being one of the ‘honey capital’ in the country due to lack of awareness, scarcity of skill manpower, lack of integration of beekeeping with agriculture and lack of bee colony for commercial cultivation. According to an estimate, the North East produces 5 lakh kg of honey annually and Assam contributes 25 per cent of the total produce. The source of honey in the region from both wild and cultivated bee hives. As per reports, Assam has only 5000 beekeepers, while North East has 40,000 beekeepers. Most of the beekeepers in the region are marginal, having one or two bee hives. Despite, the importance of beekeeping in employment and livelihood generation, the potentiality of beekeeping is not fully or even partially explored. Therefore, CSIR-NEIST has proposed to initiate some important activities under the project STINER for popularizing beekeeping in North East Region:

1. Generating Awareness about Beekeeping
2. Skill Development Programme on Beekeeping
3. Training on Bee Colony Multiplication
4. Training on Production of Some Specialized Product from Honeybee.
5. Training on Honey Box Manufacturing, etc.