Early afternoon and bright sun. The winter has just begun to settle in the valleys of Kullu Himalaya. I am at Kais, with my dear friend, Kesang. Kais is a small village on the highway that connects Kullu and Naggar.
Today we are visiting the horticulture research station in Seobagh. It’s a few kilometres. Neither of us know where exactly the station is. The village of Seobagh is some three kilometres, but neither of us have seen the research station on our many commutes through that road. We’re convinced, we will find it around, somewhere.
I had first heard about the horticulture research station at Seobagh from Dr. D K Parmar, a senior soil scientist at the Nauni University’s agriculture research station in Bajaura. He asked me to meet the scientists at the station involved with trials of Subhash Palekar Natural Farming. I haven’t made that trip yet. But it’s happening today for a different reason.
Kesang is driving. We reach Seobagh and ask around about the research station. We are told that the station isn’t in Seobagh, but on a broken and narrow link road that cuts from the next village. Not only that, but we are sceptical if the small car can climb the partly broken steep climb. But it does. Kesang learnt to drive a few years back, but she already pushes it like a professional trained in off-road climbs.
A fence runs the station’s perimeter. Past the gate the tarmac is narrow, but clean, adorned with flowers in a profusion of marigold on both sides. To the left of this road are research plots with apple trees planted in high-density, 2-3 feet apart from one another. The calcium carbonate mixture applied to their trunks looks recent, shines distinctly.
Up the steps into the first floor of the campus building are few rooms. These look like offices, and perchance small laboratories. Behind the building are (what look like) staff quarters. The station is like a small academic campus in itself.
The campus has an emptiness to it, a kind, you imagine, it didn’t always have. Is anyone here? Perhaps the campus houses fewer scientists now than it did through the 80s and 90s. Or, this is more of a satellite research station where scientists from the parent university — YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry (YSPUHF) spend some of their time at designing experimental plots, making observations, or conducting training programs.
Adjacent to the building are bee hives with walls made of mud, topped with slanting roofs, as if it were a Himalayan mud-house. And that it is; alas, not for our kind. The stories of bees, beekeepers, and beekeeping are what we are here at the station for today.
““ये मक्खी तो मधु है।””
Where my fieldwork, research, and this blog invest in stories of apple trees, today we are here to learn about bees – those vivacious pollinators whose story of companionship with the fruit tree spans an evolutionary tale that predates our own. Apple trees need pollinators for them to fruit and disperse their seeds. They can’t do it without their arthropod companions. In the Himalayas, the story of this companionship also parallels the rise and fall of apple harvests in orchards. Modern agrarian ontologies brought monocultures with reckless use of pesticides that killed and chased bee populations away. Like Uncle Khem’s story, most apple growers did not know about pollination. They thought of pesticides as ‘dawaai’ (a medicine), and the ‘spray’ of pesticides as mehnat (hard work).
‘Bees are madhu’, said a beekeeper and apple grower near Kullu. ‘They must be preserved. There will not be anything without them.’ Our conversations with beekeepers in Kullu often stumbled upon mentions of the research station at Seobagh. So today, we’re here to gather its perspective, and potential historical role in beekeeping. We come upon a young man, presumably in his thirties. He points us to an office on the floor above. ‘Dr. Joginder Sharma is an entomologist. He will be able to help.’ We walk upstairs.
Dr. Sharma’s is a small office. A table, office chairs, and few file storage units. He is first dismissive of the station’s investment in beekeeping. He tells us that the research station does not have a focus on beekeeping, but on horticulture. The station’s investment in beekeeping has been to the extent that bees help with pollination. Pollination, he tells us, is a mere aspect of fruit trees that the station carries, produces research on. As the only entomologist, he is responsible for the supervision of bee colonies. Hearing his take, on the station’s marginal stake in beekeeping, we aren’t putting much hope in this interview.
““The research station does not have a focus on beekeeping, but on horticulture.””
Moreover, Dr. Sharma is disappointed at the paucity of the impact of beekeeping interventions in the area. As an entomologist, he is often called for his expertise at various training programs in beekeeping across the district, and state. These training programs range from 5-20 days. Some training programs provide an introduction to the basics of beekeeping – handling bee colonies, bee morphology, common risks and threats, the everyday and seasonal care. Then there are more advanced training meant for existing beekeepers. These 2-3 week training programs have a specialised focus on, say, queen rearing, etc. ‘But the trainees typically have a fun time out at the training programs and then do not apply these skills, and scale up their investment in beekeeping. The government ends up wasting substantial resources on investments that don’t rear a return’, complains Dr. Sharma. ’The programs even provide the trainees a box with the bees, or a few, to make a start.’
This perplexes me a little. ‘So do the trainees don’t even rear a box/colony or two after their training’, I ask, wondering.
“They do. But that is something they were anyway doing in their older days. So, what’s the use of all this science, and of this investment in training unless they can scale up?”, questions Dr. Sharma.
His disappointment is clear. ‘There are barely any farmers here who rear a hundred, or two-hundred boxes. Deen Dayal is among those few. There are perhaps two or three like him.’ Deen Dayal is a beekeeper we met earlier this October. Deen Dayal had recently helped Kesang’s family domesticate a bee colony hiving around their home, put it into a modern wooden box, and administer it sugar-feed for the next few days. ‘Even after more than a decade of training programs, there are hardly any beekeepers like Deen Dayal’, complains Dr. Sharma.
““So, what’s the use of all this science?””
Traditional houses in Kullu were built using wood, stone, and mud. Almost every house, the residents made an inviting place for bees – like a crevice in the wooden architecture where bees made themselves home. Families made time to clean and maintain these, every year. But the shift to concrete, across villages and cities alike, also entailed a shift away from this place-making. This is what Dr. Sharma is referring to in his disappointment with trainees who have now started keeping a box or two. The twin shifts – one from wooden to concrete houses, and second the rapid diversification of commercial livelihoods, expansion of markets made beekeeping a bygone within a matter of two decades. Even if the older wooden houses continue to have those spaces, they aren’t cared for. Thus, the advent of modern beekeeping in the Himalayas is partly set in a context of loss. A loss of habitat owing to multifaceted transformations that range from use of pesticides, to changes in culture and architecture.
'It was 1965. Modern beekeeping was introduced to Nagrota Bagwan as an agriculture science research and extension project’, said Dr. Sharma.
Nagrota Bagwan is a Himalayan town, now in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh. But during the 60s it was a part of Punjab. This was about the time Green Revolution made inroads into North India. The Punjab Agricultural University played a key role in the eventual modernisations in agriculture. Both Kangra and Kullu were a part of the state of Punjab until the late 60s. Party to this modernisation, the University invested in the commercial rearing of Apis Mellifera. ‘The Apis Mellifera provides far higher yields of honey than the traditionally reared bee in India – Apis cerana Indica’, said Dr. Joginder. ‘Also, Apis Mellifera is less likely to abscond from your box if unhappy with the living conditions there’. ‘The potential yield of honey from the hives of Apis Mellifera is about 4-5 times that of Apis cerana. The mere fact that the Mellifera does not as easily go absconding when unhappy with its environment means that the beekeepers can rear upwards of a thousand colonies at a given time.’ The propagation of Apis Mellifera accompanied the introduction of modern wood hives. ‘These boxes are easier to transport to places with good flora. Having that mobility means that you can take your bee colonies to, say, the patches of wild thyme found amid the Trans-Himalayan summers of Lahaul, or carry them to areas of Kullu where horse-nut or wild rose thrive until October’.
Yet, the bee colonies that we see at the research station are neither the wall hives that were traditionally built into rural homes, nor the modern boxes made of wood. These are larger structures made of mud and straw. Further, the bees inside these structures here aren’t Apis Mellifera, but Apis cerana, the traditionally reared bee which produces about 1/4th of the honey compared to Apis Mellifera, and will go absconding if it doesn’t like the environment. Besides, unlike the wooden boxes that have the advantage of mobility, you can’t carry these hives around unto a more desirable flora. Moreover, the Apis cerana don’t enjoy being lugged around. ‘They don’t like to be disturbed. It makes it all the more likely for them to abscond’, said Dr. Sharma.
"So, why Apis cerana and why mud-hives"? I ask Dr. Sharma. There is no denying though that these mud-hives with their slanting roofs look gorgeous against the Himalayan backdrop.
'The Apis mellifera produces more honey but the Apis cerana is our species’, replies Dr. Sharma. ‘It belongs here. Conservation is also important, else who will conserve?’.
I was taken aback. We often imagine agriculture scientists as people who relentlessly talk about productivity and progress regardless of environmental costs. We think about agriculture scientists and our imagination quickly leaps into the Green Revolution. But does Green Revolution’s development and extension of high-yielding seeds, and the petrochemical arsenal of pesticides and fertilisers exhaust what agriculture scientists do, why they do it, and the potential of their work? This moment with Dr. Sharma seems to spark open a different window of insight and potentiality.
““The Apis mellifera produces more honey, but the Apis cerana is our species””
Dr. Sharma grew up in Bilaspur, a relatively lowland district of Himachal Pradesh. ‘They say that the Apis cerana absconds. At my uncle’s place next to our home in Bilaspur, the bees have been living there generations over the last fifteen years. They do not abscond if you take care of the place. But these days people do not. They don’t clean the place. They don’t make a home for bees.’ ‘Also, the Apis cerana dislike to be disturbed every other day.’ Taking care, according to Dr. Sharma, meant making the home, without overtly disturbing its residents. It meant, letting the bees go about their business, while investing in a favourable environment for them.
For Apis mellifera, Dr. Sharma tells us that the ‘Mellifera is a lure of the foreign land’. ‘We are always fascinated by things foreign, to the neglect of our own’. Mellifera may provide more honey, but it also needs an overly abundant flora for that. This means that they need to be transported all the time, moved each season to sites of abundance. Not everyone can do that. Cerana, on the other hand, are hardier and can work in less favourable settings. They also produce far lesser honey, but they withstand far harsher conditions, including the Himalayan winters.’
'Consider Asian Hornet. Hornets wreck devastation upon Mellifera, but the Apis cerana can deal with them much better, and often on their own. They can put up a fight. They have evolved in these conditions.’ Whenever I walked into a beekeepers training program at the Punjab Agriculture University or any of the KVKs (Krishi Vigyan Kendra, or Farm Science Centre) of Punjab, it was common to come upon trainees and experts with upwards of 500 or 1000 boxes of Apis Mellifera. Everyone rears the Apis Mellifera. There, I haven’t yet come across beekeepers there who reared Apis cerana. The training programs at the Punjab Agriculture University, with their focus on honey production, propagate Apis Mellifera. The dilemma is — rearing Apis Mellifera in such large numbers can make it difficult for Apis cerana to survive.
‘The Cerana might be ecologically hardier, but the large numbers of Mellifera can simply loot Cerana hives of honey and pollen. The bees are much like us – they work hard to survive, but they also loot and pillage and abscond when the need is’, said Dr. Sharma. ‘They can fight with their neighbours when starving or anxious’. Extensive rearing of Mellifera can make survival extremely difficult for the Indian bees such as Cerana, and the beekeepers who rear them. ‘The training programs across much of India and the globe focus on propagating Apis Mellifera’.
’Apis mellifera is great for those who can afford to migrate’, said Dr. Sharma.
““Training programs in Kullu see a substantial participation of women.””
I think affordability is a larger question than meets the eye. Women often do not have the cultural resources to migrate seasonally, camp in forests or faraway mustard fields for months altogether. Dr. Sharma tells us that the beekeeping training around Kullu see a substantial participation of women. ‘Beekeeping is something that can bring a meaningful income on the side. It doesn’t require a dexterous everyday labor. In fact, the Apis cerana doesn’t like to be disturbed. If you disturb them frequently, they will leave, abscond. They are like us. If they don’t like a home, or the neighbourhood, the worker bees scatter around to find a new home, and then take the queen along. You cannot domesticate the Cerana against their will.’
““You cannot domesticate the Cerana against their will.””
When I first saw mud-hives, I thought they were a standardised global alternative to the modern wooden boxes. I thought the university scientists and trainers had picked from among the global techno-toolbox of beekeeping. I thought the mud hives were, since long, a standardised alternative to the wooden boxes. But they were not, they are not. ‘Dr. J P Sharma developed the mud hives right here at the station together with other beekeepers’, said Dr. Sharma.
'Dr. J P Sharma will be better able to tell the story of how he developed the mud-hives, why, and what challenges he faced in developing them’, confessed Dr. Sharma. He’s not astutely aware of the history, save this outline. He joined the research station much later. 'The traditional spaces inside the rural wooden houses where the Apis cerana made home were warmer during winters and cooler during summers. The modern wooden boxes do not have similar insulation. When the Mellifera was introduced in 1965, it quickly became clear that they had to be migrated. The Himalayan winters are far too cold for them. The modern boxes with their relatively thin wooden plating only exacerbated this problem.’
Dr. J P Sharma, like Dr. Joginder Sharma, also grew up in the Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh. ‘He retired a few years ago. He built a house near Kullu, and made it home. He continues to live here with his wife since the retirement.’
Kesang is absolutely keen to interview Dr. J P Sharma. I am relatively more concerned about the things I need to finish next week, including a chapter of my PhD dissertation. But I succumb to Kesang’s conviction. Next, we will schedule an interview with Dr. J P Sharma.
Kesang asks Dr. Sharma about log hives. She is relatively more fascinated by log hives than she is by mud-hives. To me, the log hives are a bit pseudomorphic. But they are beautiful. Ok, I recede. Mud-hives too are a pseudomorphic, anthropomorphic imagination of the human home; log hives though are relatively truer to bee habitat. Log hives mimic the hives bees make inside tree trunks they find favourable. Log hives are tree trunks with a hollow inside. Therein the bees make their own combs that are then, about twice a year, squeezed for honey and wax. Making log hives, one can potentially mimic a more favourable habitat for their bees. Log hives are warm and fragrant, the way bees like it. We ask Dr. Sharma, why not log hives, given that mud-hives are still more laborious to build with walls of mud and straw, and roofs of grass or stone?
“Why not log-hives?”
'When you squeeze honey from wall and log hives, just imagine the amount of work the bees will have to put in to rebuild the combs that get crushed when squeezing out the honey. And the squeezed honey contains eggs and brood, that die in the process’, Dr. Sharma responded. ‘The modern bee hives – both wooden or mud, contain vertical combs that are uncapped for honey extraction of honey. Extracting honey does not destroy the eggs, nor brood. The frames are exact measurement in both – wood and mud-hives.’ ‘Just imagine the amount of work the worker bees will have to put in to remake those combs, instead of gathering nectar and pollen’.
'Unlike the modern wooden hives, mud hives can’t be moved around. But then the Apis cerana are not fond of being moved around. It increases their likelihood of absconding’. Thus, the mud-hives bring certain advantages of modern hives, with the more traditional sense of place-making using traditional consultation materials. They also have better insulation.
Beyond architecture, making a home for bees requires investments in place beyond the hives themselves. Dr. Sharma tells us that over the advent of commercial agriculture and proliferations of herbicides, ‘people have burnt an incredible variety of flora that they did not associate a direct or indirect (livestock) commercial value with’. ‘The plethora of this flora was a remarkable habitat for bees, spread across seasons, rich in nectar and pollen. Earlier each household grew mustard, but not much anymore.’
'Furthermore, farmers mix Dermat in the Horticultural Mineral Oil (HMO) spray on the pink buds, before apple flowers come to blossom. But the mustard flowers are already in a state of bloom at the time. The bees, drawn to mustard, die. We are consistently advising farmers to at least not spray during the sunny daytime, when the bees are out.’
““The collaborations with the forest department and local communities have just begun.””
Dr. Sharma complains that the 'forest department has its streak of what is valuable'. 'It doesn’t actively consult other people when designing its evaluation systems or developing plans. But this is slowly changing. Now we have begun to collaborate. These are small investments. There have been bottle brush plantations, and other trees that provide valuable flora for bees.'
'The GB Pant Institute, the YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, and the state forest department are increasingly collaborating on small plantation projects, and often together with panchayats. Yet, these are not at the scale that they can be done at. Flora that we thought to be waste, we are rediscovering its value with beekeeping.’
Among the very vocal spheres of ongoing social and environmental activism in the Indian Himalayas is for rights to forests – towards enabling the Forests Rights Act. I wonder if the experiences of beekeepers and scientists, who have worked towards reviving beekeeping, may play a pivotal role in expanding plantation and forest imaginaries. I wonder if it can help scientists, activists, and communities refigure participation, planting, disturbance, or even removal and harvests from common forests when given a right to it. Or, will the concerns of livestock exhaust their imagination? I strongly believe that a democracy unable to appreciate or make place for diversity has something noxious brewing in its underbelly. To that end, the history, and experiences of beekeepers and beekeeping provide a valuable window for thought and engagement. Dr. Sharma tells us that these collaborations with the forest department and local communities (panchayat, mahila mandal, etc.) have just begun to flourish.
““If historically, households used to rear a hive or two, and continue to do so, what’s the impact of a public investment into it?””
Among the most notable differences, apparent at a glimpse of beekeeping practices in Punjab compared to Himachal, is that of scale. The extension of Apis mellifera means that beekeepers (have to) keep hundreds, if not thousands of boxes towards a profitable vocation, and possible vanquishing of Apis cerana. Beekeepers migrate the bees over thousands of kilometres each year. The large produce of honey has also helped foster a trader community. The beekeepers get between ₹80 to 300 for each kilogram of honey. Dr. Sharma is disappointed that the training initiatives he has invested in, do not lead to such scalable impacts and returns.
Rearing Apis cerana means fewer boxes with lesser produce of honey. Beekeepers do not migrate, and it remains a secondary or tertiary source of income on the side. Dr. Sharma finds it difficult to intellectually or publicly demonstrate the impact of his extension and training programs. “If historically, households used to rear a hive or two, and continue to do so, what’s the impact of a public investment into it”, he complained.
But the remarkably lower scale of beekeeping also means that every second household can practice beekeeping, and the honey, they produce, unlike in the wholesale markets of Punjab, often fetches upwards of ₹500 and up to ₹1200 for a kilogram. There is a more significant amount of local trust with the burgeoning tourism economy in the Himalayas. Dr. Sharma acknowledges these dilemmas of scale. But it seems that as an agriculture scientist, he finds it relatively difficult to articulate and justify investments that don’t yield a particular kind of scalable impacts. The peripheral place of beekeeping in rendering critical pollination services have led to a fascinating trajectory of agriculture science research and extension in Kullu Himalayas. Perhaps, if beekeeping were a central foray of research and extension, the scientists might have found it difficult to justify this subaltern trajectory. This is perhaps why Dr. Sharma was partly dismissive of the station’s stake in beekeeping. Perhaps he thought, it was not a story worth telling.
Disclaimer: Some of the anecdotal references to Punjab are from my time spent working with Dr Trent Brown. The project was funded by Australian Research Council. It examined agriculture skill trainings in North India.