A decade ago, Manmohan Arambhya started beekeeping with a single box of bees, and today his bee yard extending in the hinterland of Sullia and Puttur Taluks has 500 boxes with approximately two crore of the species. This season—February to May—he harvested 65 quintal honey. “Depending on the bees I harvest 20 to 25 kg honey per box. During a season, honey is extracted six times from a single box,” he says.
An apiarist with a difference, the 32-year-old Manmohan of Puttur Taluk of Dakshin Kannada district in Karnataka, has trained nearly a thousand men and women in the trade.
To explore bee migration—shifting the bee boxes to places witnessing less rain—he moved from his district to the hinterland of Karnataka. These days, he is busy introducing bee hives in orchards and rubber plantations. “This monsoon 350 boxes have been shifted from my district to the buffer zone in Mysuru’s Nagarahole National Park—Gundlupete and H D Kote. The honey production is less here as the areas receive low rainfall. But the motive is to create new colonies,” he says.
He is very popular among the farmers as this activity is beneficial to them. Appreciating this venture, Dakshin Kannada District Apiculture Officer Veerappa Gowda says, “The farmers are willing to help, as they know that after bees pollinate their crop, their total yield will increase from 25 to 60 per cent.”
After completing his diploma studies 10 years ago, Manmohan had toyed with the idea of leaving his village and becoming an electrician in Bengaluru. But he decided to stay back and pursue his hobby instead. He was introduced to the art of collecting honey by his grandfather Madan Master Seraje. “He was so touched by my enthusiasm that he passed on his vast knowledge to me. From making series of wooden frames in a hive box to maintaining exact space between successive frames, from sliding a frame out of the hive to inspecting boxes without harming bees or eggs, I have learnt everything from him,” says
Manmohan, who was ranked first among beekeepers in the district and was felicitated by South Canara
Bee Keepers Co-operative Society Limited.Honey is usually sold at `170 per kg. “But private buyers are willing to pay even `350 per kg,” he says.A bee colony in a single box of eight frames has 20,000 to 40,000 bees and the number doubles during season. Besides collecting honey, he has sold 200 bee boxes (each box priced at `3,000 and above), 450 bee colonies—each colony worth `1,000—and bee wax sheet (`400 per kg) to people from Hassan and Shivamogga districts, this year.
Surrounded by honey, wax and angrily buzzing bees at his home in Arambhya, Manmohan says, “Beekeeping requires patience and hard work. From June to August, I visit 200 boxes per day to give food to bees. From September to January, I develop colonies while ensuring that there is no increase in bee population.”
