An ecosystem consisting of honey bees, elephants and rubber plantation is enabling additional income for tribal homes. Here K Sivamuthuprakash and Sanjiv Phansalkar describe the fascinating project which facilitates this ecosystem.
A standard example for explaining the concept of “externality” in Economics is one of an apple orchard and a beekeeper next door.
The honey bees from the hives of the beekeeper pollinate the apple trees helping a good apple yield, which makes the apple orchard owner happy. Similarly, the bees forage on the nectar of apple blossoms and produce more honey and so the bee keeper is happy.
But then where do elephants come in?
Down deep South in Malappuram district, there is a dense forest, a part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Elephants roam here freely foraging on grasses and other forest plants. The district has a total area of over 3500 sq km, of which a little over 20% is under forests. About 325 sq km of the forests fall under the biosphere reserve.
The district has a population density of over 1100 persons per square kilometer, higher than the population density of the State and well over twice that of India as a whole. As a result of this combination, man-animal conflicts are inevitable, particularly in peri-forest area.
Kattunaickar and Paniyar communities live in or close to the forests of the district. The 2018 and 2019 floods in Chaliyar river devastated their environment and livelihoods.
Axis Bank Foundation is supporting the persistent efforts that are being made to resettle them and to help them stand on their own feet again.
Among the steps that are being taken is promotion of beekeeping as a source of supplementary income to tribal homes.
Keystone Foundation (KF), a civil society organization working in the area has done commendable work in this regard with the financial support of Axis Bank Foundation.
Each identified beneficiary desirous of engaging in bee keeping is given two boxes to start the colony of bees in them. The bees forage on the forest and the colony grows.
Over a period of time, participants have increased their stock to 5-6 boxes. Some have done even more. The difficulty arises when the queen bee “abdicates” and abandons her own colony.
How does one help re-establish the colony? For such cases as well as for expanding the reach of this program, KF has established a “bee nursery” in the reserve forest in Nilambur with the permission of the Forest Department.
This was done in an interesting way. They chose a rubber plantation as a site for the nursery. “Rubber plants have a lot of extra floral nectar. Bees can forage on them and hence a rubber plantation is an excellent site for beekeeping,” said Mr. Ramachandra, the Project Coordinator of KF.
We visited this site in the village quite close to the entry gate of the reserve forest. The traditional occupation of the villagers was being “mahouts”. They even showed an old structure where wild elephants would be trained and tamed. The structure is no longer in use.
We were told that there are 300 boxes in the nursery. Each box is installed on a sort of bamboo or iron angle support about 3 feet high. This makes removing the honey very easy. This colony is largely of Indian hive bee (Apis cerena indica). Elsewhere, KF has encouraged rearing of other varieties of honey bees as well, including both the stingless honey bee as well as the dwarf honey bee (Cheruthen Eeacha).
We found this combination of a nursery for honey bee in a rubber plantation in the middle of a dense forest quite fascinating. The visiting party was treated to honey taken straight from the hive.
A portion of the hive is cut and given to you. The honey oozes as you bite into it. Eventually only the bee-wax remains for you to spit it out.
Then a thought came to me. Would the elephants not be tempted to come for the honey? Quite a few herds roamed in this forest. For them getting over such obstructions as were present was no issue at all.
We had heard stories about how elephants, having entered a sugar cane farm, simply do not budge till they finish all the cane! They love sweet things. How would they leave the honey alone?
Mr. Ramachandran then told me that the little bees dare the elephants! In fact, the bees can sting them on the trunk and the ears, making them feel very uncomfortable.
The discomfort of being stung on the trunk is a sufficient disincentive for the elephants to not come near the honey bee combs or boxes. And therefore even the rubber plantation remains safe. In fact, there are experiments being done to design proper “bee fences” to ward off elephant raids.
We have now a combination of an excellent pair of externalities. The extra-floral nectar of rubber feeds the bees and they produce honey. And the honey bee deters the elephants from rampaging through the rubber plantation.
States of Tripura and Meghalaya are establishing rubber plantations on slopes of Eastern Himalayan hills in their territory. Again, these are done for the livelihoods of the tribal folk there.
Beekeeping will surely contribute to their incomes. And it will protect the rubber plantations from elephants. It is worth their while looking into this and following this model of mixing apiary with rubber plantation!
Sanjiv Phansalkar is the director of VikasAnvesh Foundation. He was earlier a faculty member at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). Phansalkar is a fellow of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad.
K Sivamuthuprakash is a PhD from IIT Bombay and currently works with VikasAnvesh Foundation.
