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| September 2007 |
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Beekeeping in Northern India - lessons for and from AfricaBy Dr Garth CambrayIn Jan/Feb 2007 Garth Cambray visited many beekeepers in Northern India as part of a Rotary International Group Study Exchange between South Africa (9320) and India(3100). From an apicultural and apidological perspective, India, he believes, is a promised land.
Three indigenous species of honeybee are found in Northern India. The first is the ultra small Apis florea, little bigger than fat a mosquito which builds little hand sized combs hanging from branches in hedges. The second is the conspicuous giant honeybee, Apis dorsata which builds monstrous single comb nests hanging from trees, water towers and temples (including the Taj Mahal). The third is the bee which occupies the equivalent ecological niche as the Africa and European races of the western honeybee, Apis mellifera. This bee is Apis cerana indica, a slightly smaller bee which also builds its nests inside holes in trees and walls and so on. In addition to the three indigenous species, the European honeybee, Apis mellifera ligustica (Italian race) has been introduced and is the dominant bee kept by beekeepers. The Ganges basin comprises about a million square kilometers of land, much of which is intensively cultivated. Rich fertile soils and irrigation water from the water table and mighty river combine with India's hard working people to produce one of the most productive agricultural regions on Earth. In the 1970's the Indian Government implemented a program to plant Eucalyptus and teak trees along all roads in the state of Uttar Pradesh. These trees flower concurrently with the winter mustard which is planted over about 50% of the arable land in the Northern Ganges basin. This translates into an absolutely monstrous honey production potential, something which is only just beginning to be developed.
In Old India, honeygatherers were the dominant source of honey for Indian consumers. Honey gatherers tend to collect the honey from wild Apis dorsata hives. In certain places I saw as many as 200 of these monstrous beehives, some measuring more than 1.5 meters across and nearly 2 meters long, hanging from trees and water towers. Typically honey gatherers will bid at an auction held by a landowner for the honey in such a tree and may harvest as much as 20kg per hive in good years. That would mean a successful haul could be up to 4 tons of honey. However, the honey is of a low quality from these hives as the honey gatherers tend to be rather simple tribal people using very old, and largely unclean equipment.
In the increasingly prosperous New India the government is actively transferring technology for modern beekeeping into rural areas with beekeeping in some areas achieving 100% growth year on year. Beekeepers whom I visited used the global standard Langstroth beehive, consisting of a specific size brood box with 10 frames in it for comb building, with additional boxes placed on top as the bees get stronger so that more honey can be produced and harvested. Beehives were constructed from either wood, high density polystyrene foam or concrete. The modern beekeepers keep predominantly the western honeybee, Apis mellifera, although in the Himalayas the more cold adapted Apis cerana is kept in very small little beehive boxes. These bees produce very limited crops of only 2-3kg per year, but are capable of being kept organically without any added medications.
Most beekeepers live with their beehives during the honey flows produced by mustard, eucalyptus and then post monsoon summer honey flows. In many cases I saw beekeepers using a clever tent which is completely sealed for honey extracting - honeycombs are taken from the beehives to the tend, then the honey is spun out of the combs in a honey extractor and the empty combs are returned instantly to the hives - in this way, poor beekeepers with little money for extra equipment are able to get maximum use out of the infrastructure they have. Given that many apiaries have 200-300 colonies on either side of a road, this means that the beekeeper constantly extracts honey at roughly the rate the bees produce it. A central honey buying company, Darbur Honey, purchases honey from tens of thousands of small producers and processes this into high grade A, grade B and then cooking grade honey, as well as a range of value added products such as traditional Indian medications. A professional brand development agency has been contracted to develop very attractive packaging which appeals to the local and export markets. In India the local market is the most important market and is undersupplied. From an agricultural perspective, the Indian and Chinese economies are far luckier in terms of their pollinator populations than their western equivalents. In the USA, Europe and South Africa, massive die offs of Apis mellifera of various races have resulted in catastrophically reduced agricultural production periodically over the last 100 years. In India, wild bees provide adequate pollination for most crops, and bees are kept for honey production more than anything else. Hence if one species of bee were to become sick, there are still always at least 3 other species of bee present to provide pollination services. Given that most bee diseases are as a result of one species of bee being infected by diseases from another it also follows that one of the most logical places to breed disease resistant bees for western use will be in places where all the other bees are present. With increased global trade these diseases will spread around the planet when people take honey home with them, so rather deal with the problem than try to avoid the inevitable.
Lessons which we can learn from how India has harnessed beekeeping as a way of creating wealth are many. Firstly, one needs to replace old methods with new methods - the replacement of honey gathering with beekeeping is the most important - teaching honey gatherers to keep bees in boxes increases the productivity of the bees, as they don't get destroyed each time honey is harvested. Similar programs have been attempted periodically throughout Africa, but often fail due to the costs of technologies used. Consequently, in a developing context, one needs to use technologies which are not ridiculously expensive - Indian beekeeping development uses simple, low cost high tech beekeeping systems. The equipment is robust and can be fixed by the numerous car mechanics on the sides of roads all over. In the development context, it is often better if a technology is designed by the same people using it - then the concepts of its construction are less alien and it can be maintained. A classic example in Africa is the typical EU funded beekeeping project which places beautifully constructed stainless steel EU made honey extractors in a rural area where replacement parts are unavailable and soon the machine and project dies with it. The methods of beekeeping in India allow beekeepers to process their products on site, without requiring vehicles to transport products. The honey extractors in India are interestingly designed to use a mixture of beeswax and honey as a lubricant on all moving parts - one of the biggest sources of contamination in honey globally is lubricating oil and grease from moving parts in honey extractors. By using this simple alternative, the beekeeper avoids a potential honey contaminant. As a beekeeper it was exciting to see a nation doing bootstrap beekeeping on
the scale evident in India, and the proximity of India to Africa means that with
time Indian technology and thought patterns will help us in Africa to
effectively harness the massive honey production potential of our continent.
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