By the Editor
Recently on May 20, Directorate of Horticulture, Government of Meghalaya observed World Bee Day by organising the programme on the theme, `Promote Bee Keeping: Augment Farmers’ Income and Ensure Sustainability of Life”, at All Saints’ Hall, Shillong. The main aim was to create awareness and to encourage farmers to take to bee-keeping for additional income, while at the same time stress was laid on the utility of preserving and enriching the environment essential for bees. If trees are wantonly felled, birds and bees will disappear. Honey has medicinal values, especially when one suffers from cough and throat ailments and it also serves as a substitute for butter and jam. Bees prepare honey by sucking nectar from flowers and they work ceaselessly throughout the whole year. During the session, there was valuable and free interaction between farmers and officers which greatly benefited the farmers. Emphasis was laid on significance of a professional approach, proper packaging, testing, and product traceability for certifying organic origin of honey produced in the state. On that particular day, honey products from different districts of the state were displayed for sale.
Scientists observe that bees are very intelligent and disciplined that work diligently for many hours. According to estimates there are nearly 20,000 different species of bees of which about 95 per cent are solitary bees that lead a monastic kind of life and only five per cent are social bees that live together in colonies comprising hundreds and thousands of members. Interestingly, social bees are very well-organised and disciplined in performing their duties systematically and without interferences from any quarter, most being the honey bee. Thousands of honey bees living together in hives and colonies thrive because of cooperation which is an in-born quality among all the three different hierarchies, namely, the queen bee, several hundred drones, and thousands of worker bees. As the name itself signifies, the queen bee, big in size and is head and mother of colony that lays thousands of eggs per day during summer totaling up to a million during her lifetime. Drones are males and do not work at all except for fertilising eggs laid by the queen. Worker bees are female bees, smaller in size, that do not lay eggs but constantly do all the labour for maintenance and growth of the colony. A close look at bee colonies will be a lesson indeed for humans because of orderliness and discipline, each performing one’s duties without being ordered or told in a concerted effort. Instinctively, no one tries to come in the way of another one and so work is smooth and progressive. Honey is also obtained from wild bees, known as ‘lwai’ in Khasi.
For years, Cherrapunji (Sohra) honey was a favourite brand produced by farmers from Sohra and neighbouring regions, especially the slopes of Ri War bordering Bangladesh. But after establishment of Assam Cement Limited (ACL), later on Mawmluh Cherra Cement Limited (MCCL), many trees were cut and smoke emitted from the chimneys polluted the atmosphere thereby killing countless bees and causing irreparable loss to farmers.