Apiculture is one of the potential businesses in Bangladesh. This study tries to examine, the profitability of apiculture practice by using financial analysis of investment costs and benefits. Study Design: To evaluate the accurate and particular investment on beekeeping, entire data were categorized into two major sections on the basis of bee species Apis mellifer and Apis cerana. However, overall investment costs and benefits also analyzed to measure overall profitability. Place and Duration of Study: Entire study data were collected from secondary sources and field questionnaire survey in Tangail District, Bangladesh in November 2014 . “We have a lot of knowledge on beekeeping and this is part of our tradition and culture. We have a special bee species, known as Carniolan honey bee,” said Strniša.
The Carniolan honey bee is an indigenous Slovenian race of bee, which is famed for its docility, hard work, and excellent sense of orientation.“We produce honey of good qualities and we are sort of pioneer in beekeeping. We treat bees and honey as a product,” she added.
However, commercial beekeeping in Bangladesh is still in a nascent stage. Honey is produced partly through beekeeping by farmers in winter and partly from wild bees.
Strniša said Slovenia plans to launch a pilot project on beekeeping and honey cultivation in association with Brac, a leading non-governmental organisation based in Bangladesh.
Standard financial techniques were used to evaluate the investment costs and returns of beekeeping business, the sensitivity analysis was made by using net present value, internal rate of return, return of investment and benefit-costs ratio.
Government concern and NGOs involvement is mandatory to improve beekeeper training, marketing, and overall beekeeping business, which could contribute to the socio-economic development of marginal farmers of Bangladesh.
Apart from providing financial services to microenterprises, PACE is providing value chain development interevtions in technical aspects to promote farm and off farm subsectors. Honey processing is one of the important off farm subsector under PACE project. PACE is intended to help bee keepers to produce quality and processed honey that has a great demand in our country. In Bangladesh there are around 25,000 bee keepers and 2,000 bee farm exist who are producing honey, struggling with various constraints.
Lack of technological skills and processing plant are the key determinant factors of producing pure or quality honey in our country. In Bangladesh there are a few processing plant that belong to private companies. Farmers do not have access to purify their honey from the companies as service render. In Bangladesh, marketing of honey is a mandatory product for testing from BSTI.
A few bee keepers are involved in testing honey for getting certificate of honey marketing. Most of the bee keepers process honey by manual way of heating that does not have scientific accuracy.
We collect Sundarban raw honey directly from Mowals in every year for our valued clients. He also said the honey farmers, in many cases, were in unhappy condition over the business due to lack of proper marketing system.
In this regard, he said proper attention and technological support can make the honey production a huge-money business for the country.
He urged the concerned authorities to bring the honey growers under training on honey processing and its marketing.
Prof Dr Mahtab Ali of Zoology Department of Rajshahi University told BSS that honey farmers needed technological support, financial assistance and a sound marketing system. “It’s possible to make the honey farming a million-dollar business for the country, creating huge jobs,” he said.
It is naturally flavored honey comes from the delightful combination of diverse flowers in the beautiful Sundarban. We are marketing it with Khaati Food.
The Mouwali after entering the forest and locating a giant honeybee colony, make torches from green goalpata leaves and some dry materials for smoking to drive the
bees from the comb. Smoking removes most of the honeybees. The Mouwalis bring the torch very
close to the comb to get rid of worker bees and as a result flames scorch the wings of a number of
bees. The queens are often killed in this process of honey hunting reported by Zmarlicki (1994).
This is one of the reasons of low productivity of honey in the Sundarbans mangrove forests.
After the removal of bees from the hive, the Mouwalis cut the portion of honey from the hive with the
help of a knife locally known as ‘dao’. The comb honey is placed in a woven basket made out of
canes known as ‘Dhama’. A ‘Dhama’ can hold about 10 kg of honey comb. These are then brought
to boat where the honey is squeezed by hand to separate the honey from the wax.
The liquid honey
is then stored in plastic barrel of about 150 litres for transportation. The Mouwalis also revisit the
colonies after a period of one month or more depending on the size of the colony and flowering
condition of nearby vegetation
They do not take the chance of harvesting any hive at a later date. The Mouwalis live in
the boat and they have to face tigers on the ground and dacoits (bandits) in the river.
The Mouwali mixed all kinds of honey collected in one trip along with large quantities of wax, debris of plants,ashes and sometime dead honeybees and even larvae of honeybees. The honey collected in this way contains 20 to 30 percent moisture, as a result honey ferment in a very short time.
