Sweet taste of success
KANIZ FATIMA
Honey collection, arising from beekeeping, has turned out to be a lucrative profession in the country, and is helping thelocal economy to grow considerably. By setting up modern processing plants and ensuring a good marketing management system, entrepreneurs are doing good business.
Traders across the country collect huge quantities of honey from the flowers of mustard, coriander, black cumin, sesame, and some other rabi crops as well as litchi and mango orchards every year.
By selling the items in the local markets and exporting them to different countries, including Japan and India, the beekeepers are being economically benefited, which ultimately helps increase the size of the local economy.
According to experts, honey is produced by two methodsone is natural extraction and the other is apiculture, which involves culturing honey in a certain type of wooden box. The Sundarbans, the hill tracts, and Madhupur are the major hubs of natural honey production in Bangladesh.
For generations, poor fishermen and villagers in the Sundarbans have been collecting wild honey between April and June. They sell most of their produce at cheap prices to traders, who invest money and contact them for supply.
In some other areas, honey is collected from flowers and crops between December and May. These areas include Manikganj, Pabna, Gopalganj, Shariatpur, Madaripur, Tangail, Dinajpur and some other districts. The collectors supply their honey to different parts of the country, including Dhaka and Chittagong.
VITAL ECOSYSTEM
Around 7,000 to 8,000 farmers are engaged in apiculture in the country and the number of boxes has now reached 1,20,000. The farmers roam from one place to another across the country in search of honey round the year. They visit different places to find various kinds of flowers in different seasons of the year, said Khandaker Aminuzzman, director of the Moumachi Unnayan Prokolpo of Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC).
Honeybee pollination increases the yield. We can reduce the use of pesticides through beekeeping, he added.
According to BioMed Central, which publishes journals on a wide variety of subjects, pollination is considered the most essential regulating, supporting, and cultural ecosystem service. It is a critical service for fruits, vegetables, nuts, cotton, and seed crop production among many other agricultural crops, and supports the reproduction of wild plant communities. Bees alone comprisean
estimated 25,000 to 30,000 species worldwide, all of which are flower-visitors. Humans rely on bees to pollinate 87 of the 124 (70 per cent) most valuable crops used directly for human consumption.
Beekeeper Abdur Rahman, who works in the Dinajpur area, said those who come to collect honey have teams of three to four people and each team collects 30- 40 maunds of honey.
Another honey collector from Tangail, Manik, said he has 120 honey boxes and collects about 2,000 kg of honey every winter. Our honey collection calendar is packed. After collecting honey from mustard oil fields, we shift to Kalizeera fields in Sirajganj and Pabna, then to the mango orchards in Chapainawabganj and Rajshahi, then to the litchi gardens in Dinajpur and Ishwardi, and in the last three months to the Sundarbans, he said.
Beekeepers stay in the Mymensingh and Sirajganj regions in the winter season because of the abundance of mustard flowers. Later, when
mango sprouts they move to Rajshahi region search of honey.
They also go toFaridpur and Gopalganj in search of honey fromKalojira field, said Aminuzzman.
BSCIC is conducting a government project named Beekeeping project through modern technology involving Tk 2 crore. The duration of the project is five years (20122017). BSCIC has already trained 6,000 farmers under the project, he added.
The Bangladesh government and many NGOs like Bangladesh Institute of Apiculture (BIA), Proshikkhan Shikkha Karmo (PROSHIKA) and Mouchas Unnayan Sangstha (MUS) have initiated various schemes to provide technological support such as training, marketing facilities, and supply of necessary equipment for beekeeping to increase the production of honey in the country. Some NGOs have already set up modern honey processing plants.
TOPICA HONEY
Topica Honey has introduced technologies to modernise apiculture practice in Bangladesh. It hashoney processingt built with rman technology t Ashulia, Savar, Dhaka.
We use afully - automated system to process honey. There is no human touch when the honey isprocessed.The ant hasthe acity to process nnes of honeyannually and work is under way to enhance the capacity of the plant, said Manzur Morshad Khan,
managing director of Topica Honey.
When asked if they face any problems in running the processing plant, he said: We have to face problems in running uninterrupted production due to frequent power outages. We use a generator to run production. But, if we have to use the generator for power supply frequently to operate the factory, the software will not work properly. If the software fails, we have to get service from Denmark to fix it, which takes some time. In the meantime, the production remains closed, he added.
We have mainly been facing this problem in the last three to four months, he also said.BSCIC official Khandaker Aminuzzman said a few years ago, people were afraidof buying honey from the local market as they thought it would be adulterated. Now, they have been able to grow confidence among the people about their product. Now the farmers are not facing any problems in selling their products and are getting fair prices for their products, he added.
There were 22 stalls in the recently concluded five-day honey fair on the premises of BSCIC. All the products brought to the fair had been sold except a few. Yet, even a few years back, sales at the fair had been limited.
EXPORT HORIZONS
A local company is exporting honey to Japan and the Middle East countries. Moreover, processed honey and raw honey have been exported to India, he added.
We have a lot of plans to expand our local market. For the first time, we arranged a fair on the premises of the Department of Agriculture Extension at Farmgate in the capital in February. We got a good response from the people there. We are preparing to arrange another fair on the premises of the Daffodil University at Dhanmondi after Eid-ul-Fitr, he said.
We are also trying to increase exports. We have already communicated with the European Commission about our intention to export our honey to the EU. Only shrimp is exported to EU as animal food from Bangladesh at present. Honey is also animal food and we are trying to export this item as well as shrimp, he added.
We have tested the samples of local honey in the Science Laboratory and received a positive report, which said that all parameters are up to the standard. The European Commission has a residue monitoring plan which examines if there is any harmful substance in a product. We have sent the test results to the health department of the European Commission, he added.
We sent the report to them on March
22. After receiving the report, they informed us that they have got it and it is under evaluation. They will let us know the decision after the evaluation process is completed. We are waiting to hear from them. If the report is granted, Bangladesh would be able to export honey to the EU, he further said. Experts said apart from honey, export of queen bees, candles, and gum can also contribute a lot to the countrys economy.
