The increasing profitability of apiculture

With over half the honey produced in India finding markets abroad, beekeeping (apiculture) has emerged as a lucrative export-oriented allied activity of agriculture. For nearly two decades, growth in honey exports has constantly outpaced the rise in production. India is now the world’s sixth-largest supplier of this natural sweetener to the global bazaar. The scope for further boosting exports is substantial, but that would require locating new markets abroad and revamping the honey sector’s entire domestic value chain, from production to processing, packaging, branding, transportation, and marketing. At present, the bulk of the exports, nearly 80 per cent, land up in the United States alone, with only small quantities going to other countries like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Morocco, and Canada. New destinations can easily be found in regions like the European Union and Southeast Asia. Attention needs to be paid also to curbing rampant adulteration of honey with sugar syrup, which mars the reputation of Indian honey in both domestic and export markets. Besides, beekeeping, confined now primarily to states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Punjab, Bihar, and Maharashtra, also needs to be expanded to other areas, especially the northeastern region, which abounds in flowering plants.

Interestingly, while India’s honey output has increased since 2005-06 by nearly 240 per cent, exports have bounced by over 260 per cent. The trend of exports growing faster than domestic output seems to have intensified in recent years. The government data indicates that while indigenous production has risen between 2018-19 and 2022-23 by 72 per cent — from 77,000 tonnes to 133,000 tonnes — exports have surged by 86 per cent — from 43,000 tonnes to about 80,000 tonnes.

The demand for honey has steadily been soaring the world over, thanks largely to the growing awareness of its health benefits and as a healthier alternative to sugar. Its use in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries is also growing rapidly. Honey consumption received a major shot in the arm during the pandemic because of its immunity-boosting trait. It also has anti-bacterial properties and contains hydrogen peroxide, which is deemed an effective sanitiser. In Ayurveda, natural honey is widely used for the treatment of numerous ailments, including cough, phlegm, asthma, hiccups, eye infections, diabetes, obesity, worm infestation, vomiting, and diarrhoea, apart from its external application to alleviate skin troubles.

With the induction of modern technologies and the emergence of a new class of migratory bee farmers, who move their bee colonies from place to place in pursuit of flowering plants and cross-pollinated crops requiring vector pollinators for seed setting, the profitability of apiculture is steadily burgeoning. Honeybees, actually, have a symbiotic relationship with agricultural and, more particularly, horticultural crops. While bees source their much-needed feed — pollens and nectar — from flowers, flowering plants, on the other hand, benefit from the bees’ role as carriers and disseminators of pollen from one flower to another for fertilisation. In fact, honeybees are deemed to be the key pollinators for about 16 per cent of the world’s 250,000 important flowering plant species. More significantly, about one-third of the human diet is believed to be derived from the products of bee pollination. Studies carried out by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) indicate that pollination through honeybees raises the seed production of radish by 22-100 per cent, and that of cabbage and cucumber by up to 400 per cent. It also improves the quality of the produce. Thus, the economic contribution of honeybees as vector-pollinators, in many cases, turns out to be higher than the value of the honey and its high-priced by-products which the bees generate. Most of these by-products, including royal jelly, bee wax, bee pollen, propolis, and bee venom enjoy good demand in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call in 2017 for ushering in a honey-based “sweet revolution” in the country, on the lines of the Green Revolution or the White Revolution, proved a major turning point in the expansion of the honey sector. The launching of the National Beekeeping and Honey Mission, and a National Bee Board, hastened the technological modernisation of this sector and a perceptible rise in the productivity of bee hives. These bodies have also been instrumental, directly or indirectly, in the emergence of a network of integrated beekeeping development centres, beekeepers’ collectives and cooperative societies, and various kinds of farmers’ producer organisations and startups engaged in different activities connected with beekeeping, and processing and marketing of its products. The ICAR is also running an all-India coordinated research project on honeybees and pollinators for undertaking situation-specific research and development work in different agro-ecological regions of the country. These efforts need to be intensified to boost honey output and enable beekeeping to play its due role in doubling the farmers’ income.

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