West Bengal govt develops safe, lucrative way of collecting honey for Sundarbans villagers

Collecting honey from deep into the forest in Sundarban has always been a risky business and very often, it results into fatalities due to tiger attacks. Since it is also a key way for the locals to earn their livelihood, the West Bengal Forest Department in a unique initiative is helping locals with beekeeping at its forest camps. They have also helped the villagers so that the honey can be sold on e-commerce platforms at a lucrative price.

The effort, which began in September last year, is now beginning to yield results after overcoming many challenges. Speaking to DH Divisional Forest Officer Santosha GR said that in view of the fatalities due to tiger attacks among those entering the forest for honey collection, they thought of helping the villagers with beekeeping inside the safe forest camps.

“So we thought instead of allowing them to go inside the forest, we can give apiary boxes to them. We have camps in several areas inside the forest. So they can do beekeeping inside the camps and collect honey," he said.

Cooperatives were formed in four areas of the Sundarbans in September under which there were several self help groups (SSGs). The Forest Department arranged training for 120 villagers in beekeeping.

Facing paucity of funds, they approached a state run cooperative bank for loans. The bank granted loan of about Rs 44 lakh to cooperatives with which apiary boxes were purchased.

“Even during the nationwide lockdown where all businesses suffered losses, these people produced 37 tonnes of honey,” said Santosha.

Now that the honey will soon be sold on e-commerce platforms, the villagers will get Rs 600 for per kg of honey. They used to get only Rs 100 per kg even as they risked their lives entering deep into the forest for honey collection.

The initiative is also gaining popularity among the villagers. Currently about 80 people are involved in it and 300 more have expressed interest.

They were also taught how to process and package the honey and even how to file GST.

It is not only safer for the villagers to do beekeeping in forest camps but the quality of the honey is also better. While collecting honey from forests, the locals squeeze the entire beehive and in process several bees and maggots also get squished in the honey. This results into animal protein getting mixed with the honey, said Santosha.

However, in the forest camps the beehive is put inside a rotator which removes the bees without killing them and hence, no animal protein gets mixed into the honey, improving its quality.