Honey is both the nectar from flowers and a term used to express endearment for someone’s sweetheart. The twain have combined more seamlessly for G Raju, an ace beekeeper from Harati village in Kolar district. What began as a labour of love years ago has turned into a lifetime passion. Travelling across the State, he maintains over 700 beehive boxes in farms, gardens, orchards and backyards.

Honeybees demand nothing from the beneficiaries except some space where their industriousness could blossom uninterrupted. And in turn, they help the farmers increase the yield through pollination.

Raju became interested in bees around the turn of the century while working in an apiary in Punjab. Back in Karnataka in 2001, he rented a house in Bengaluru and placed some beehive boxes in the green surroundings. Bees began to hover around and he saw the potential for adding more boxes. A session of training in Bhagamandala in Kodagu led him to take beekeeping as the main source of livelihood. He decided to place beehive boxes in different regions and began persuading farmers to install boxes in their farms.

Today, he maintains these boxes in places like Hiriyur, Kadur, Birur, Vijayapura, Nargund, Chitradurga and Bengaluru. He extracts 10 to 12 tonnes of honey annually and sells nearly 500 boxes per year. In a standard beehive box, the brood chamber has eight frames suspended from the roof. Generally, a beehive box seller would supply only four frames that would carry the parts of combs attached to them. This allows bees to build their combs in the remaining four empty frames.

Raju says that a beehive box can ideally yield 30 kg of honey in a year in rural areas. The farmers can extract honey every 20 days while in urban locales, these boxes may yield honey just thrice a year. Yield is generally high between November and March, as this is the flowering season.
Sunflower has come to be a major crop in farms right from Tumakuru to Vijayapura. In Birur, Kadur and Chikkamagaluru, where coffee estates abound, the bees mainly draw nectar from coffee flowers.

In the beginning, Raju used to sell the honey to Coorg Honey and Wax Producers’ Cooperative Society at Virajpet. Later, he set up his own honey filtering unit in Bengaluru and secured Agmark certificate for the bottled honey. While he supplies honey to retailers in various towns and cities, he also sets up a stall in events like Lalbagh Flower Show and agricultural fairs.

Acknowledging his achievement in the field, he was felicitated at GKVK recently. A tonne of honey fetches him nearly Rs two lakh. He says, he spends nearly 20 days of a month in the fields and farms across the State, creating awareness about beekeeping and providing farmers the initial training.

His wife Geetha is a constant companion in his pursuit in disseminating information on beekeeping. Their knowledge and consummate skills in beekeeping make them almost a mobile encyclopedia on apiculture. G Raju can be contacted on 9494695937.

source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> Supplements> Spectrum / by M A Siraj / September 18th, 2017