Pakistan achieves self-sufficiency in honeybee

Pakistan is exporting honey to the Gulf countries and other states after attaining self-sufficiency in production of honeybee.
Honey, produced from plants, is of prime quality and can be sold at good price in open markets abroad.
Bee-keeping has become a profession of income generating and existence of 240,000 colonies of honeybee in all the four provinces and Azad Kashmir is proving its advancement and success.
The profession can easily be adopted as an income generating activity, especially by women as it does not require big investments or infrastructure.
According to official sources here on Tuesday an increase in average yield of honey per colony has been registered from 4 kg to 21 kg while an increase in total production of honey in the country has increased from 250 tonnes to 2500 tonnes since 1982.
The best time for bee-keeping is from October to November and spring season. However, honey can be produced throughout the year by planting some species of plants.
The bee-keepers should encourage bees to get their food from natural sources like flowers and plants instead of using sugar in rainy or winter season.
Development of new honey bee management techniques, production and distribution of genetically superior honey bee queens are vital to achieve progress.
Honeybee Research Institute provides training to the people in bee-keeping through different courses arranged by the institute because inexperienced people squeeze the unripe beehives and extract honey mixed with bee parts which could be hazardous for consumption.
"We are striving for promotion of use of honeybees for pollination of vegetable seed fodder and fruit crops for higher yield and development of a low cost comb foundation locally to replace costly and imported metal sheets to the farmers," a concerned official said.
Besides, establishment of a processing unit is essential for demonstration and training in collaboration with provincial research and extension by providing colonies training.
The European bee was first introduced some 20 years ago and after consistent efforts now it has more than 150.000 colonies being managed by 11,000 bee-keepers.
Honeybee is a higher energy food, which cures many ailments and benefits the body in various ways as it contains antibiotic substances.
Virus cannot survive in the honey due to its quality to absorb water. A 100 grams of honey contains 303 calories, the official said.
The institute has organised 16 training courses at national level, 67 courses at regional level for farmers, professionals of agriculture and forest departments, workers of social-welfare departments, women organisations, students and boy scouts leaders from across the country.