Adoption of Recommended Beekeeping Practices in Kumaon Hills of Uttarakhand

Abstract

Beekeeping in Uttarakhand is one of the oldest traditional practices followed both for the commercial purpose as well as the domestic use. It is an important supplementary income generating activity in the state. According to the experts, there is a need to adopt modern beekeeping practices by the traditional beekeepers in the state, especially in the areas like bee management, better extraction, honey storage and quality control. Honey bee farming is now a days becoming more popular due to its market demand in national as well as the international market. The farmers not only obtain economic benefits but beekeeping also helps the farmers increase the agricultural productivity through pollination. Uttarakhand has huge potential for beekeeping due to plenty of flora and suitability of climate but the farmers still depend on the traditional practices resulting in the low yield of honey produce both in terms of quality and quantity. Hence, there is a huge scope of adoption of advanced scientific practices in the state of Uttarakhand that can add to the farmers income in the state. ”Mountain farmers in Uttarakhand are facing extreme difficulties in meeting their basic needs because of meager opportunities to engage youth in respectable employment. The paper suggests that the Uttarakhand has tremendous scope for commercial beekeeping and use of bee for pollination of diversity agri-horticultural crops and wild flora. Also, the paper emphasizes on the constraints for beekeeping development and strategies for organic honey production in Mountain hill of Uttarakhand.