Pollination services provided by honeybees and beekeeping help improve the livelihoods and food security of mountain people by enhancing the yield and quality of crop production, biodiversity conservation, better ecosystem health, and income generation from the sale of bee products, most prominently honey. Here, we describe the contribution and role of managed pollination services through beekeeping in improving resilient agriculture and livelihoods in mountain areas.

The issue

Over 80 percent of plants and three-quarters of the world’s food crops rely on animal pollinators. Insects, particularly bees, are the most effective pollinators of agriculture and horticulture crops. However, there is growing evidence indicating an alarming decline in pollinator abundance and diversity globally and in the HKH due to factors such as habitat loss, spread of pathogens, excessive chemical-pesticide application, competition from alien species, and climate change.

The decline in natural pollinators has a negative impact on crop production, examples of which have been reported from the cash crop farming areas of the Himalaya. An extensive ICIMOD study carried out in 2002 in the apple-farming areas of China, India, Pakistan, Bhutan, and Nepal showed a severe decline in apple yield and quality as a result of inadequate pollination.

With a decline in naturally occurring pollinators, honeybees have assumed an increasingly important role as pollination-service providers. Honeybees are reported to be one of the most efficient providers of crucial and high-value pollination services and play an indispensable role in enhancing the production of many high-value crops such as fruit and nuts, vegetables, pulses, oilseeds, spices, and fibre and forage crops.

The solution

Pollination services provided by honeybees and beekeeping have been identified as a simple, low-cost, environment- and women-friendly option that helps improve mountain agricultural productivity, ecosystem health, and the livelihoods of the mountain people in the HKH. A recent collaborative action research study conducted by ICIMOD (as part of the Himalica initiative) and the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) in Chitral, Pakistan, concluded that introducing honeybees for pollination – and not just for honey production – and training farmers to properly manage bee colonies enhanced the setting of fruits by up to 14 percent, reduced premature fruit drop to 6 percent, and enhanced the overall fruit yield by 48 percent. It also enhanced the quality (i.e., weight, shape, and colour) of the apples (Figure 1).

Realizing the importance of honeybees as pollination-service providers, apple farmers in Himachal Pradesh, in northwestern Indian Himalaya, are using honeybees/beekeeping for managing apple pollination. Supported by the Government of Himachal Pradesh, an organised system is in place for hiring and renting bee colonies for apple pollination in Himachal.

Orchard owners rent bee colonies for pollination of apples and pay the beekeepers for this service. The current rate for hiring a bee colony for apple pollination is USD 12-15 per colony for the two-week-long apple-flowering period.

This large-scale use of managed pollination has led to the establishment of several pollination entrepreneurs not only in Himachal, but also in its neighbouring states. This has provided employment and income-generation opportunities for the local youth. However, only 23,000 colonies are currently used for pollination in Himachal, which is just one-tenth of the huge requirement of 250,000 colonies to pollinate over 90,000 hectares of apple orchards in the state, indicating the huge scope for creation of more pollination-based enterprises.

Pollination services help in creating a mutually beneficial relationship between poor beekeepers, who are paid for providing bees for pollination, and orchard owners, who use the pollination services and receive a higher yield and quality of produce. Furthermore, the by-products of the pollination services of honeybees, such as honey, beeswax, and pollen, provide great nutrition and health benefits, and if marketed, further increase household income. In fact, beekeeping is part of the culture of mountain communities across the HKH and has sociocultural, economic, religious, and spiritual significance for mountain communities.

Impact and uptake

Studies by ICIMOD reveal that beekeeping contributes close to 50 percent of household cash income in Chitral, Pakistan; in Alital, in Dadeldhura District of Nepal; in the Kishoreganj area of Bangladesh; and in the Kullu Valley of Himachal Pradesh, in India.

Such services should also be of immense benefits to HKH farmers who are transforming their farming practices. Supported by various government and non-government development organizations and favourable agroclimatic conditions, mountain agriculture is transforming from traditional cereal crops-based farming to cash-crop farming. Currently, around 25 percent (i.e., 6.63 million ha) of the cultivated area in the HKH is used for cash-crop farming, with total annual production of around 46 million tonnes. Many of these crops require cross pollination by insects such as bees for optimum crop production. Pollinating such a huge area of crops would require 20-24 million colonies of honeybees. This reveals the tremendous scope for establishing pollination enterprises that would provide self-employment opportunities to millions of youth and women.

Contributor

Uma Pratap, ICIMOD

Further reading /information

Partap, U., Hussain, S., Hussain, E., Inayatullah, M., Gurung, M.B., Muhammad, I., & Shah, G.M. (2017). Honeybee pollination and apple yields in Chitral, Pakistan. ICIMOD Working Paper 2017/19. Kathmandu: ICIMOD.