REPORT ON SCIENTIFIC BEEKEEPING

Beekeeping refers to the maintenance of bee colonies.Under experimental learning programme (ELP), there is one module for Beekeeping (ELP-408) to train students. Through this, the students will acquire experience on establishment and maintenance of beehives and harvesting quality honey. The skilfulness in beekeeping will have abundant prospectus to start up their individual entrepreneurship in this aspect.

It provides self- employment to majority of unemployed youth and has great scope to develop as a prime agro-horticulture and forest based rural industry.

Objectives:

1.To develop skills in establishment and maintenance of hives, Apis mellifera under horticultural ecosystems.

2. To develop skills in seasonal management of the beehives.

3. To develop skills in identification and management of pests and diseases of honey bees.

4.To acquire skills in collection and storage of honey and other bee products.

5.To build up enterprise management skills.

A two day training programme was organised for students and staff on beekeeping in SKCHS. Mr. Sandeep and Shiva of Mohan Honey Bee Industries from Araku, Visakhapatnam have come to give hands on training in the college.

Training programme got started on 21st Dec, 2021, where Mr. Sandeep has explained all the process in beekeeping through a power point presentation in the classroom. He has shown clips of his apiary and their products.

We have decided to setup the beehives in the Botanical Garden opposite to Herbal Block under Devils tree (Alstonia scholaris),. They brought five beehive colonies and other accessories such as honey extractor, wax removing tray, safety gloves, bee veils, pollen trap, unsealing knives, comb foundation sheets, smoker and bee brushes. On the following day, Mr. Sandeep and Shiva have shown the practical way of dealing with beehives. Some of the students and staff were also involved in taking out the frames and emptied the hive completely including feeder. All the removed frames were once again checked for any dead honey bees, diseases and presence of any predators. Then, they are transferred to already cleaned hive for better management. After this, they explained about the process of honey extraction with honey extractor and artificial feeding of sugar syrup to the bees.

By this training programme, we have gained knowledge on scientific beekeeping