Indore: A seminar on the importance of beekeeping was organised at Shri Jain Diwakar College on Sunday evening. The chief guest in the programme was bee expert Dr Bhal Chandra Waykar, dean of life science and technology at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University Aurangabad. DAVV former vice-chancellor Narendra Dhakar was also present in the event
“Intensive use of fertiliser is very harmful to bees. Beekeeping can only be done in fertiliser free environment, as fertiliser kill the bees”, said Dr Waykar.
“Increase in the thyroid is due to crops grown with fertilisers. In such crops, the presence of minerals and nutrients comes down and the crop only helps to satiate hunger and will not provide essential nutrients to the body”, he added.
He further said that pollen grains and nectar are very essential for survival bees. Bees also helps in pollination of grains as the bee’s body is hairy and grains get attach to it and falls randomly. Bees also provide humans with honey, wax, royal jelly, pollen, venom and propolis.
One bee queen costs Rs 1 lakh. Also, the cost of wax is Rs 2k per kg, bee venom costs Rs 8k to 18k per one gram and propolis costs Rs 1k per kg, he added.
Bees always visit the same type of plants for gathering nectar and collect it in their respective hives and create uni-floral honey. Whereas companies nowadays provide us with multi-floral honey which is quite harmful and they also add preservatives in it. So always take honey from honey hunters, he said.
Research on bees: In a research, it was found that bee visits about 1200 flowers a day. In one colony of bees, there are about 25-30K bees. Bees are temperature-dependent and they work from morning 5.20 am to 7.30pm daily in suitable temperature or else they remain in their hives in undesirable weather condition, he added.
Effects of beekeeping on the lives of farmers: The bee expert also showed some of the farmers’ example who used beekeeping in their farms and come up with great cultivation of their crops without using any fertilisers.
He showed a record increase in the yield of crops due to pollination by honey bees maintained in the field. Farmers producing crops like pomegranate, sweet lime, onion seeds, pigeon pee, guava, cotton, pearl millet, drum stick, lemon, soybean, sunflower, green gram, mango, ajwain, bitter gourd, mustard and other crops benefit from beekeeping.
