Honey bees do not just produce honey. They can also increase yields of crops, especially vegetables and fruits, from 20% to 300% by ensuring cross pollination. The biggest advantage of using honey bees for cross pollination is that it will help chemical based agriculture transition to organic farming.
Realizing this potential of the bees, an electrical engineer from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) has become a farming entrepreneur. Increasing crop yield by using honey bees has become his passion. He has sowed the seeds of silent revolution that may change the way farmers look at agriculture.
Shrikant Gajbhiye, 29, happened to learn bee keeping during a five-day hobby course at Pune while doing his MBA at IIM Kozhikode. Impressed with the utility of the bees, he has launched a company named 'Bee The Change' at Mumbai. Besides helping farmers in Vidarbha, Sindhudurg, Pali, Khopoli and Virar increase yields of their crops, he is also producing and selling honey and bee-wax under 'Bee the Change' brand. In future, he wants to even produce honey venom, royal jelly, pollen (rich source of protein), propolis (bee glue) most of which have pharmaceutical applications.
To begin with, Gajbhiye started networking with farmers from Pauni village, about 80 km from Nagpur, in Bhandara district. About 25-30 farmers in the area, after taking proper training in bee keeping, installed the bee boxes in their fields. Many of them already seen a 200-300% rise in yields of vegetables like bitter gourd, drum sticks, cow pea beans, capsicum and fruits like guava, papaya, lemon and banana.
"At IIM, I learnt about social entrepreneurship or ventures. Bee The Change is thus not an NGO. It is very much a profit making company though it may take some time to take the desired shape. Farmers generally use a lot of chemical pesticides as sprays. These kill the bees," said Gajbhiye. This is the reason why honey bees are disappearing, something that is a cause of concern in almost the entire developed world. In India, even the scientists are not aware of the long term consequences of this which, if not checked in time, will disrupt mankind's food security. The use of honey bees makes agriculture more sustainable. It reduces the overall cost of production as farmers don't have to take loans to buy high cost pesticides.
Gajbhiye was lucky to get technical support from Shivaji Science College in Bhandara. Bhuwanendra Rahile, a zoology lecturer in the college, told TOI he had been supporting the venture by training farmers in making honey bee boxes, scientific bee keeping and telling them about role of bees in cross pollination.
It has not been a cakewalk for either of them. "It is difficult to convince farmers to buy these boxes that cost about Rs5000. I have literally given them free initially and gradually some began sharing halft the cost. Removing the fear that bees sting and can even kill has not been easy. Once they saw that guava or lemon trees which would just have a few hundred fruits now had thousands, they became part of the wave," Gajbhiye stated.
To some extent Bee The Change is also working with tribals who extract honey from forest trees. The tribals actually destroy the colony by smoking it from below. The company has been training them to use the jumpsuits and follow scientific honey collection method that makes extraction of honey possible every three months without destroying the colonies.
Technically as per a state government report of National Horticultural Mission quoting the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) India needed 70 lakh bee colonies but has just 12 lakh of them. Maharashtra needed 5 lakh and had just 8000. This may change if Gajbhiye realizes his dream. He wishes to have at least 10,000 farmers with him. "It is scalable project. If you have the passion and the will, sky is the limit," he says.
Farmer quotes
"I used to sell about Rs60,000 worth of cow peas from my farm. Now I get double the amount. My brinjal output has also doubled and I sold Rs1 lakh worth. Same is the case with bitter gourd. I have just three lemon trees in my field that hardly bore any fruits as I never paid any attention to them. Now their branches touch the ground because of weight of the fruits" -- Naresh Nandurkar, a farmer from Pauni
"I grew Bengal gram in just quarter acre and got about 75-80 kg. After I kept a honey bee box in the field, the produce increase to 150kg" -- Balkrishna Panchbudhe from village Bhulewadi in Pauni
"I was in Army. I started agriculture only in 2005 and wasn't very happy. With bee keeping, I have got tremendous increase in yields of vegetables like lady finger, and crops like cow pea, turmeric, jowar, and tur. My guava and lemon trees are loaded with fruit." -- Chaitram Kotekar from village Sarandi (Bujurg) about 25km from Pauni
"I took up bee keeping only about five months back. But my guava and tur crops are looking very healthy and I am sure I can reap a good profit." -- Gyaneshwar Hemne from village Umri, about 18km from Pauni
The method
* Pollination, a natural process, is of two types-- self and cross
* In self pollination pollen from flowers of same plant fertilize the female parts of flowers
* In cross pollination the pollen for fertilization comes from flower of another plant. This improves yields. The cross pollination is helped by agents like wind, water, or insects. Honey bees are the best pollinating agents. Since they go from flower to flower collecting nectar, they help cross pollination on large scale
* Farmers buy bee hive boxes and keep between their fields. The honey bees are not disturbed. They are allowed to follow their natural course in which they start flying about 4-5 am in the morning for nectar and water collection
* Cross pollination allows stronger traits to be transmitted to seeds and help improve agriculture in the long run too
Source : Times of India
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