Beekeeping for Sustainable Economic Development of India: Challenges and Opportunities

Apiculture, in conjunction with agriculture, offers great scope for income generation through beekeeping. Pollinators provide pollination services that are crucial for enhancing crop productivity and sustaining ecosystem services. Honeybees are the important pollinators of various fruits, vegetables, oilseeds, pulses and fibre crops. In order to achieve sufficient pollination to improve productivity of crops, beekeeping industry needs encouragement. In addition to providing valuable products like honey, beeswax, nectar, pollen, propolis, royal jelly and other products, beekeeping helps to provide additional source of income and employment generation to rural masses. As per estimates only 10% of the existing potential for beekeeping has been utilized in the country and there is much untapped potential. India has a potential of over 200 million bee colonies as against 3.4 million colonies at present which can provide employment to over 6 million rural families. Organised honey collection using modern techniques can provide additional 120,000 tons of honey and 10,000 tons of beeswax from the forests. This can provide employment to 5 million tribal families. Increasing honeybee colonies shall not only increase production of bee products but aso will ensure sustainability of food production through enhanced agricultural and horticultural crop production. Beekeeping industry and its expansion faces several challenges which need to be addressed to make this industry more profitable.