By Davidson Sargunam, on 20 May 2021.
World Bee Day is observed on May 20 every year, highlighting the vital importance of honey bees and other useful bees to humans. The day is celebrated with the theme for this year, Bee Engaged: Build Back better for Bees. The UN also has urged to sensitize the people with bee-keeping awareness and the importance of Bee derived products.
There are almost 20,000 different species of bees in the world that live in colonies. There are three types of bees in each colony: the queen bee, the worker bee, and the drone. The worker and the queen bee are females, and the queen only can mate with a drone to participate in the regeneration of the species. Only the queen lays eggs. The tasks of the worker bees are to clean the hive, collect pollen and nectar to feed the colony and take care of the offspring.
Honey bees are classified as social bees, as they live in big colonies usually of more than 30,000 workers. There are ten types of honey bees across the world. Honey bees are pollinators of forest fauna, cereals, horticulture and vegetable crops. They produce and provide sweet, healthy food, honey.
In India, there are four common honey bees—Apis cerana indica, Apis dorsata, Apis florea and Trigona (stingless Bee). The farmers extract honey from Apis cerena indica mainly by domesticating it. Colony Collapse Disorder is a major threat to honey culture as the entire colony migrates, often causing heavy loss to beekeepers.
Beeswax is the second important hive product. Beeswax is used for making candles, wood and leather polishes, and an ingredient in artist’s materials. The pharmaceutical industry uses wax for a release mechanism, drug carrier and binding agent.
Many reasons exist for which bees are endangered, including habitat loss, pesticides, and other anthropogenic causes. Declining numbers of different species of bees have been noticed worldwide, which means that there is a real risk on the regeneration of species. In seven years span, the United States witnessed approximately the annual deaths of 1.6 million bees.
Climate change is a major root cause of many environmental issues with deleterious effects on bee populations. With the increase of the mercury level, the colonies migrate to higher elevations seeking green pastures to survive and regenerate bees. According to the wild honey hunting indigenous communities who dwell in the forests, the bee population is limited with the shrinkage of the wild nests.
Recently a mysterious fungal infection is attacking the honey hives in the domestic nests, especially in Tamil Nadu and the border districts of Kerala that make the hives rot with black colour and the colonies migrate, causing loss to the beekeepers.
Tribal Foundation, an NGO based in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu, is encouraging indigenous people to have domestic honey bee nests with the help of the Horticulture Department, which provides nests on subsidy to agriculturists. The Foundation discourages wild honey hunting as it kills thousands of bees, larvae, eggs, and hives. It may create a loss of species and habitat disturbance of the bees besides reducing the bee population.
Davidson Sargunam is one of the pioneer educators of the environmental movement based at Tamil Nadu, India and member of IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management.