Apiculture (Beekeeping): a promising livelihood option for the Sunderban people

Abstract

Honey bees are important ‘friends of farmers’ as natural pollinators of agricultural crops and orchard to enhance the quality and quantity of agricultural production besides providing employment, additional income and good nutritional supplementary food with medicinal properties. Beekeeping offers a great potential livelihood option and is comparatively less demanding in terms of investment, labor and time. Beekeeping could be a family activity and it does not require any extra land other than bee plants and trees where the bees can go and collect nectar. The Sunderban is bestowed with a dense natural forest cover where apiculture could be an additional income generating activity. Beekeeping has been proved as a good component of homestead farming in coastal parts of West Bengal and Bangladesh. Having agricultural activity as a main source of income for the farming community of the Sunderban, the huge potentiality of apiculture has not been fully realized by the rural households mainly due to lack of awareness on its role as pollinator as well as an additional income provider for a span of 8-9 months a year. The Kakdwip Research Centre of Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (KRC of CIBA) has introduced and popularized the beekeeping technology in South 24 Parganas district with the aegis of National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) to create awareness among the rural households as an income generating avenue. The technology package included provision of sufficient hands on training to the identified beneficiary farmers and supplying necessary quality inputs for apiculture.