Beekeeping - A Sustainable Income Success Story

Introduction

Smt Hmangaihkimi aged 31 is having 5 Acres of land and is mainly practicing Mixed cropping system of farming. Her husband is a teacher and an enthusiastic farmer. Agriculture and Bee keeping have proved to be sustainable source of income for their family. Though they don’t depend entirely on farming and bee-keeping as their main livelihood, their living standard has improved since practicing beekeeping as it gives a sustainable income.

Training

As part of the Skill Training of Rural Youth (STRY), training program on ‘Beekeeping’ was conducted during March 2019 by Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA), Siaha District, Mizoram in association with State Agriculture Management and Extension Training Institute (SAMETI), Aizawl, Mizoram and National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE), Hyderabad.

This training helped her acquire knowledge and skill required to identify the Queen in bee box, hiving of Honey bee colonies, division and uniting of bee colonies, management of Bee colonies in different seasons, extraction of honey and processing and the importance of modern bee-box.

Achievements

She introduced following modifications in the traditional bee keeping practices based on the knowledge gained during the training :

• She replaced some of her traditional bee-box with modern bee box when she learnt that the modern bee-box give more harvest.
• She placed a stick/other material in her traditional bee box for the bees to make their hives easily, simple yet more productive and economical.
• She inspects her farm more regularly to see for any intruders/ pesticides which is the first and foremost step for any kind of infestation.
• She is able to take proper care of queens whereas earlier she was not even able to locate the queen like many other youths. She is now not only able to split the colonies as a technique to avoid the swarming but also understand about the timing and concepts like colony strength.
• With the adoption of innovative practices, she generated a net income of Rs 28,000/- per month.

Importance for farmers

As a result of her success, three person from their community also started bee-keeping on a large scale. But as a result of delayed rainfall there was incidence of  wildfire which also affected their farm and forced them to downscale the operation. She has also encouraged and motivated fellow farmers to adopt scientific beekeeping practices and management rather than traditional one.

Source : Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare