Bareilly’s ‘Bee-Man’ is big honey bizman
This ‘BeeMan’s’ popularity comes from his specialty of making the bees produce different varieties of honey like neem, strawberry, lychee, mustard and jamun etc.
LUCKNOW: Sawalia Saran Singh of Girdharipur village in Bareilly district is also known as ‘BeeMan’ or ‘Bee Uncle’ among locals and traders, as he is the biggest beekeeper in the Rohilkhand region.
In 1972 he started off with just two apiaries but now owns around 800 of them. Put in a simpler terms, he started with an output of 60 kg honey per year and now it has risen to 48,000 kg honey a year.
Singh’s popularity comes from his specialty of making the bees produce different varieties of honey like neem, strawberry, lychee, mustard and jamun etc. “Bees have always attracted me. More than their dedication and hard-work, it’s their love for honey that made bees my favourite. And in 1972, instead of carrying forward the traditional farming business, I decided to do bee business. But my decision not only left my father fuming but also made others laugh at me,” said Singh at his six-acre farm in Girdharipur.His job isn’t easy. To make bees produce maximum honey, he has to travel thousands of kilometres taking the apiaries around. “We carry the bee boxes around in a truck to make the bees feed upon the flowers grown in different part of the country so that they produce honey of different varieties,” he said.
LUCKNOW: It is said that the fruits of labour are always sweet. But in this case hard work and dedication have produced sweet and multi-variety honey itself.
Meet Sawalia Saran Singh of Girdharipur village in Bareilly district, who is also known as ‘Bee-Man’ or ‘Bee Uncle’ among locals and traders, as he is the biggest beekeeper or apiculturist in the entire Rohilkhand region.
Singh did not get these titles for free as his journey was no less than a rollercoaster ride. He started off with just two apiaries but now owns around 800 of them. Put in a simpler terms, he started with an output of 60kg honey per year and now it has risen to 48,000 kg honey a year.
Singh’s popularity comes from his specialty of making the bees produce different varieties of honey like neem, strawberry, lychee, mustard and jamun etc.
In 1972 when Singh started his business, bee keeping was of not much significance and his decision of entering the trade brought him ridicule from other farmers.
“Bees have always attracted me. More than their dedication and hard-work, it’s their love for honey that made bees my favourite.
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Bees have always attracted me. More than their dedication and hardwork, it’s their love for honey that made bees my favourite
SAWALIA SARAN SINGH , bee keeper
And in 1972, instead of carrying forward the traditional farming business, I decided to do bee business. But my decision not only left my father fuming but also made others laugh at me,” said Singh at his six-acre farm in Girdharipur.
To begin with he bought two apiaries from Delhi for Rs 300. “Initially, I was nervous and extra cautious as a little mishandling could be dangerous. But I took training from experts and started my innings as a beekeeper,” said Singh.
His dedication and hard work fetched him about 60 kg honey that year.
“Being a honey lover myself, I did not sell the honey but distributed it among family members in order to make them understand my work,” he added.
Forty-six years on, he still has those two boxes (apiaries) that changed his life.
In the next season, he managed around 120 kg honey from the two apiaries and then decided to invest more into the business. The numbers of apiaries than began to swell. Within a couple of years, the number of apiaries reached 100. In four years it was 300. From then, the number of apiaries continued to grow.
“By that time I started to understand the behavioural changes of bees, their likes, dislikes, and off course ways to enhance their capability to produce honey,” he said.
Gradually, not only the numbers of apiaries swelled, the quantity of honey also multiplied manifold.
On an average he now extracts around 48,000 kg honey a year.
However, his job isn’t easy. To make bees produce maximum honey, he has to travel thousands of kilometres taking the apiaries around. “We carry the bee boxes around in a truck to make the bees feed upon the flowers grown in different part of the country so that they produce maximum honey,” he said.
“Since we make bees to feed upon nectar of flowers, we take bees especially to the region growing particular variety of flowers or fruits. For instance, by October 15 every year we take our bees to Badaun, famous for mustard plantation and let them feed upon mustard flower nectar for almost a month.
The honey churned out from these bees is of mustard variety. By December, the bees are taken to Nainital, allowing them to feed upon strawberry farms to churn out honey of strawberry variety. In April, we take bees to Kannauj, where the bees again get mustard farms to feed upon,” Singh said.
Singh considers lychee honey the tastiest.
“For bees to produce lychee honey, we take them to the lychee farms to feed upon the nectar of lychee flowers. We have to stay there for one whole season for the bees to collect nectar. Similar, is with case for neem, eucalyptus, jamun and strawberry varieties of honey,” he said.
Singh mostly keeps Italian bees, scientifically called Apis Mellifera, which have large honey production capacity. Then come the Indian bees (Apis Cerana Indica) and little bees (Apis florea) which, comparatively, are poor honey producers.
However, it’s not the production capacity of bees that made him famous. It’s the art of understanding bees that got him the title of ‘Bee-Man’.