|
Business to Bee
The rich vegetation in Nepal supports bee-farming very well. To tap the opportunity learn the secrets of bee-keeping from this man who now boasts of 100 hives of bees.
Work for two days in a week and earn Rs. 300,000 per annum. Use rest of the time for other work or fancy.
This may sound unbelievable. But this is exactly how the honeybee keepers are doing their business, says Ishwari Khatiwada, the owner of Mount Everest Honey Products, Chitwan.
More interestingly, bee-farming does not require very high investments to start with. If you have Rs. 20,000 - Rs. 30,000, you can start it very easily, says Khatiwada. Before getting into the bee-business, he was the owner of a jungle resort in which he had invested more than Rs. 2.5 million. He had to quit that business due to a number of reasons, but he is not complaining.
With the advice of the Apiculture Development Section at Godavari, Lalitpur, Khatiwada started with the seed money of just Rs. 20,000 with which he went to Haldwani in India and bought two bee-hives with bees, three empty hives, bee food for the rainy season and some medicines to protect his bees.
Now he has 100 hives of bees and hires some technical and non-technical hands only at the time of honey harvesting. “One person can take care of more than 200 hives if managed well,” says Khatiwada, “Initially I started with just two hives and earned more than Rs. 10,000 in one year. I doubled the hives every year and gained by this.”
Bee-farming is quite different from other small scale businesses as the farmers must travel with bees frequently to various farming areas and forests as well. Bees collect honey from different kinds of flowers and plants. Therefore, they need a wide ‘pasture’ of such plants and flowers. Especially, mustard and buckwheat flowers in the Terai region and orange, apple and other wild flowers in the hilly region are best suited for the honeybees.
About the possibility of business expansion into more than 2,000 hives, Khatiwada says, “We lack the access to the areas suitable for bee-grazing. The country has a very diverse environment making bee-farming a highly potential business but at this time we cannot reach those places due to poor travel facilities. So, we cannot operate the business on a large scale at this juncture. But if the security condition of the country improves, I believe that one can easily handle more than five hundred hives.”
The tensions during the travel are very high. Security checking takes several hours. If the bees do not get enough air during a long drive, they die. “Last year I lost 200 hives of bees due to this reason,” Khatiwada recalls.
The other problem in bee-keeping is the use of pesticides. When the bees collect nectar from farm plants, they collect pesticides as well. Honey mixed with pesticides can’t be exported.
At present, at least 1,500 bee farmers are affiliated to various bee-associations. Everyone has a minimum of 10 hives to a maximum of 150. They produce more than 300 metric tons of honey each year, which they sell mainly to the Salt Trading Corporation and a little to the local customers and traders. Apart from honey, bee farmers also harvest bees-wax. They also breed queen bees and sell them. Other products are bee hives and honey juice.
|
