Farmers stuck to wheat-paddy like honey, Amritsar lad offers plan bee

AMRITSAR: This young postgraduate apiarist could be a beacon of hope for farmers seeking to come out of the vicious circle of wheat and paddy cultivation.


Despite knowing about the profitable economy of beekeeping, majority of farmers are still reluctant to venture into apiculture since neither there is buy back assurances or any minimum retail price on honey by the government.

Besides, beekeeping is largely confined to the unorganised sector and in event of any losses beekeepers are not able to generate pressure on the government.

After completing his postgraduation in Punjabi, 29-year-old resident of Jethuwal village near Amritsar, Pawandeep Singh started with running an educational academy, tried to get a police job and also move abroad but as luck would have it, he finally chose to continue his father Shamsher Singh’s profession of beekeeping.

As compared to conventional farming, beekeeping is a different and challenging profession. He said he owned 220 bee boxes and keeps on travelling across the year with his bees to collect nectar from different flowers grown on the hills of Jammu and Kashmir to Himachal Pradesh to plains of Punjab, Haryana , Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

“In January, I am in Rewari in Haryana, where there is mustard season and in February, I come back to Amritsar, when eucalyptus flower blossoms. In March, I takes bee boxes to Pathankot near litchi plantations and then from April 10 onwards I travel to Jammu and in May I am in Kashmir region for multi-flower nectar, including apple trees, and then from acacia in June. Then I take my bee boxes to Sirsa when cotton flowers blossom, where I stay for an extra one month for feeding bees before moving to Nohar Bahadra in Rajasthan for nectar from beri flowers. In October, I take my bee boxes to Shivpur in Gwalior when ajwain flowers blossom,” said Pawandeep.

He said beekeeping was no doubt a profitable profession but it required a lot of labour, advance planning and of course one should have courage to take risks. “When I travel to other states like Madhya Pradesh, there have been incidents of ransacking and while moving from one place to another carries chances of damage or loss of bee boxes,” he said. To add profits to the business, he said that farmers were required to collect honey in different seasons and from different regions, so that the bees could gather nectar from different mixes of flowers or from the same type of flower.

He said the taste, colour and texture of honey also varies from the flower sources. The honey collected from Srinagar region was lighter in colour as compared to honey collected from various areas of Punjab, adding that light colour honey was milder in taste as compared to darker one and the former fetches more price. Some of the people approach him to purchase pure hone for medicinal purposes. Giving example, he said the eucalyptus honey was good for respiratory issues.

Pawandeep said being a small farmer, he couldn’t afford to purchase machinery for processing the honey, yet he said he processes it at home and prevent it from fermentation and crystallisation. He has given employment to three persons and produces different flavoured honey, including mustard, litchi, multi-flower, eucalyptus, mustard and ajwain. He added that he earned around Rs 4 lakh per annum by selling honey ranging from Rs 250 to Rs 450 a kilogram.