Bengaluru banker makes a buzz with beekeeping mission

At a time when health-conscious citizens are looking far and wide for pure honey, Mahadeva Swamy, a banker in Bengaluru, is on a mission to revive the concept of neighbourhood apiary and help people harvest the syrup on their own by setting up beehive boxes on vacant plots and terraces.

Amid concerns over the disappearance of bees from the city due to pollution and urbanisation, Swamy has maintained 40 boxes on a 30x40 plot opposite his house in Talaghattapura, which has thousands of bees buzzing all through the day.

Alongside his job as a home loan counsellor at SBI, Swamy has been training urbanites and farmers, especially during the pandemic, and setting up apiaries with a budget of less than Rs 5,000. “If you have a vacant plot or an open terrace surrounded with flower-bearing trees in a 3-km radius, you can easily harvest up to 60 kg of honey annually,” says Swamy, who is also certified and empanelled by the horticulture department and GKVK for training citizens.

“The honey harvest depends on the kind of species that you maintain. Generally, two varieties — Apis cerana (Thudave honey bee) and Apis mellifera (western bee) — are popular. While the local variety will yield about 10 to 15 kg per box per year, the western bee will yield 40 to 50 kg of pure honey per box per year,” he says.

In South Bengaluru alone, Swamy has distributed 100 to 150 boxes among enthusiasts and helped them harvest pure honey with zero maintenance.

According to him, each of the boxes will have more than 50,000 bees. “If the availability of flowers is abundant, you can harvest 5 to 6 kg per week with exotic variety bees and about a kilogram per month with desi variety bees. The local variety requires more food. As the area I am living in is surrounded by Turahalli and other forest patches, there is plenty of eucalyptus and wildflowers species,” he explains.

On average, one can install about 10 to 12 colonies (box) on a 30x40 vacant site. “I initially began with 10 boxes and now increased to 40 boxes. The only threat that one faces is the attack by fly-catching birds like kingfisher or lizard and ants. If you safeguard the honeybee box from these, there will not be any damage to production,” he says.