JAGATSINGHPUR: In a region known for its paddy and betel leaf cultivation, a young Ashok Sarangi of Jagatsinghpur saw an opportunity in honey bee farming four decades back. Today, he is 64 and mighty proud to have helped close to 120 people of Balikani, his ancestral village under Erasama block, to create an alternative livelihood from beekeeping.
His journey started with his love for honey. “As a child, I was always curious to know where honey came from. My parents showed me the bee hives in the mango trees in our backyard and told me about the process of how honey is extracted. I found it very interesting,” he recalled.
At the age of 15, Sarangi bought two clay pots and collected a bee hive from a mango tree to begin his experiment with honey beekeeping. Happy with the first harvest, he decided to take it up on a big scale and full-time. Interestingly, he did not undergo any scientific training for this. “I learnt everything by experimenting with beekeeping for many years,” he admits.
The idea of beekeeping, also known as apiculture, came to him with a bigger picture. He wanted to help traditional paddy and betel cultivators generate a secondary income by taking up beekeeping with less investment.
Till 1999 - the year when Odisha was battered by a super cyclone - Sarangi harvested two to three quintals of honey per month from the hundreds of bee boxes that he installed on his farm. He generated an income of at least `25,000 every month by selling pure honey without any major investment. “However, after the super cyclone, things worsened as the deadly natural calamity ripped Jagatsinghpur off its trees. This also affected the cultivation of the traditional crops for several years,” said Sarangi.
This was when he decided to train villagers, unemployed youths and women, in apiculture for the production of honey, beeswax, pollen, bee venom, and other hive products. He also contributed to the conservation of biodiversity, as honey bees play a crucial role in pollination. Sarangi also helped people connect to the officials concerned to get the bee-rearing boxes with bee colonies.
“For many of the people in my village, beekeeping is the only source of income and they are doing well by selling pure honey,” he said. But, he admits, the production is not like what it used to be before the super cyclone. Sarangi currently produces 80 kg of honey every year from 43 bee boxes. He has so far trained over 500 people across the state in beekeeping and recently, Odisha University of Agriculture Technology (OUAT) felicitated him for honey production.