 If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live," said Albert Einstein. But how? Beekeeping plays a crucial role in both the environment and the economy due to its impact on pollination, biodiversity, and agriculture. Today, we will meet a chain maker who is harnessing the power of this lesser-known profession, or should I say, art, to improve the lives and livelihood of many. Let's welcome Bharat Vaj, the founder of Bee Tribes. Welcome Bharat. So, Bharat, I would like to begin with, you know, trying to understand this. Why are bees so crucial for the environment? Why their absence could be so catastrophic? The statement from the Einstein is based on the fact and the recent studies. That is, more than 75% of food crops depend on cross-coordination, depends on insects, especially bees. So, currently, one-third of our global food production is because of the cross-coordination done by the bees. So, if we lose the bees, then we are going to lose the food productivity done by the bees. So, this is the basic point. Even in the last year, World Bee Celebration Day, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations stated that beekeeping and bees are the key for us to end global hunger and global poverty. So, that much importance bees are having in our food security. Now, let's try to understand the entire ecosystem that, you know, revolves around bees. They help in agriculture or keeping the environment intact. So, how does it all go about? There are two genders and flowers for male flower and female flower. The owner from the male flower has to go inside the female flower. It usually happens naturally. We call it natural pollination or self-pollination. And the second category is cross-coordination. For the cross-coordination process to happen, the flowers need external support in terms of animals, insects, even sometimes humans. But majority of the cross-coordination is done by the insects and particularly bees. Not only honeybees, there are 20,000 different species of bees available in our world. Solidary bees, honeybees, family bees and so many different species and genre of bees are available. In India particularly, we are having, we are rearing five different species of bees. And in North India, we are having apis melifera, variety of bees. And in South India, the people are doing Indian bees like apis sarana and deca variety. So Bharatan India, how big is this market? We are having a separate body under the Ministry of Agriculture called National Depot. And we are currently one of the largest exporters of honey to the world market. So, do you think that this market is developing and this culture of you know, honey bee cultivation and you know, all the products that are derived out of all this, is it expanding, where do we stand today in terms of growth? The market is expanding and the capitalization of market, the help of government support is also growing. Government is having so many schemes, supporting, beekeeping. There are some certain schemes which gives up to 50% of the subsidy in bank loans and certain schemes which gives up to 5 crore investment with 60% subsidy. For example, if a farmer take loan of 5 crores, he can able to get a subsidy of 3 crores. So, one of the, I believe there are some very good prospects in this particular field. So, do you suggest farmers who are not into beekeeping, they can also adopt this and you know, and could make this as additional source of income while doing their regular farming? Definitely farmers should do beekeeping, not only as a part of considering this as an additional income of source, they should start beekeeping to increase the productivity in their farming. So, in the Madhukarathi website and National Bego website, there is a column where they have published so many research based on the researchers, how many, how much productivity is getting increased in each crop. For example, if you say, if you take Sun Tower, there will be an increase in productivity from 20% to 3200 crores a day, not because of increasing water source or because of increasing fertilizer and pesticide usage. By simply doing beekeeping, they can be able to produce more productivity from 20 to 3200 crores a day. The honey is a secondary source of income. I would suggest the farmers to start beekeeping just to increase the productivity in their farming. So, can you throw some more light on this particular fact that just by beekeeping, the production increases phenomenally? How does that happen? That happens because of increasing cross-pollination in the crops. So, if we take 30 to 40 years before, there are more natural colonies available in our farmland because of extensive use of pesticides and all those things, the natural colonies and the natural habitat getting destroyed. The bees, there was a decline in natural population of the bees. But currently we are doing beekeeping that is the reintroduction of bees into the agricultural fields. Because of this, the pollination services is getting restored in the farmlands. So, the transfer of pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers because of the receipt of bees to connect honey and pollen into the flowers. So, bees usually visit lots of lovers in a single way. So, because of this visit, the transfer of pollen happens and the productivity got improved. Having a bee hive can also impact very, very positively. That's a very good news to me and sounds really wonderful. Now, can you take us through that entire journey if a farmer has to introduce beekeeping in his land or somewhere around that? How can he do that? So, for beekeeping training course in any of the agricultural universities near their locality. So, minimum are also trained for at least a week and they have to take guidance from the agricultural university where they can find and buy quality bee boxes. Then they can start their own beekeeping with minimum amount of boxes, let's say 5 to 10 boxes they should start with. And they should learn the art of breeding the beekeeping boxes. And they can breed the boxes by their own and they can increase the number of beekeeping boxes in their company. They don't have to need or define anyone else to supply continuously the bee boxes or bee colonies. They can breed their own colonies with minimum amount of training. And this beekeeping doesn't demand so much skill set. So, what all as a farmer would I need at my farmland to be able to start this? First of all, I don't have any single centre plan till now. So, I am doing beekeeping in my neighbour farms and some of the farms and my friend farms and all those things. So, but technically you don't need your own land to start beekeeping. But if you have your own land then you should start beekeeping doing beekeeping. Because the bees are going to exploit your production within 1 or 2 years. The resources and additional resources are the farmland should be better and it should have some floral sources. So that the colony, the bee colony will get the resources for their necessary survival and ample honey production will be there. Okay, that sounds really wonderful. By doing this beekeeping one can not only increase the productivity but also get additional income. So, it seems like an answer to all the farmer issues we are having all across the country. We are grappling with issues like the low income and all the vagaries of nature and weather harming and marrying the cultivation all across. So, all this could be taken care of by this additional support of income from the beekeeping. That sounds really great to me. So, Marat, in your experience, have you seen lives getting changed because of this particular phenomena when a farmer turns a beekeeper as well and changes life? First of all, as a corporate farmer, I started my own beekeeping in that particular farm. That farmer was harvesting roughly 30 to 35,000 coconuts per year. So, after doing beekeeping for 16 to 17 months, in that period he harvested almost 140,000 coconuts. So, this much amount of almost 300% increase in productivity without giving any additional fertilizer or manual. In the same way, I introduced a farmer started beekeeping with our support and guidance. We introduced the beekeeping boxes. We supported them in training and in studying the boxes. And after doing beekeeping for 6 months, almost 28 Goa trees, Goa tree branches got broken because of the increasing bite and size and number of Goa's getting produced. And he was able to produce 2000 coconuts in his farmland with only just 18 coconut trees. So, he came across a bumper harvest after this. That's great. Yes, the harvest got multiple times. He can't be able to market his produce. That was another bottleneck in agriculture. That's a wonderful bottleneck to have. That's a wonderful problem to have, I would say, in such increased productivity. So, Varadhano, let's talk about the product which comes out of beekeeping. So, you get 5 products. First one, we all know that first product is honey. And second product we will get is pollen. Bees visit the plumbers to collect two things. First one is nectar and another one is pollen. Nectar is getting converted into honey and stored in the hive. Pollen also they collect and they will store in the hive. So, they need both pollen and honey to make a pollen bread which will be given as a food for the larva and all the bees inside the hive. And the third product we can harvest is the beeswax which has external medicinal properties related to skin which has a huge amount in cosmetics market. And the fourth one is royal jelly. We can harvest in grams from a hive but the extraordinary medicinal benefits because of the extraordinary medicinal benefits of royal jelly that's a huge demand in the market. The value of the royal jelly is roughly 1 to 2 lakhs per kg. And the final one is bee venom. We are able to harvest the bee venom by having a bee venom harvester inside the hive. It has excellent medicinal properties and some of the researchers showing we can do that bee venom can be used for preventive cancer treatments. So, we've all known honey for its taste and you know adding all those kind of different kind of honey food stuff but you repeatedly mentioned about medicinal values. So, can you highlight some of the medicinal values that honey brings to us? Using all the five products we will call it api therapy. There is a separate term called api therapy. In that api therapy or the combination of all the five products will be given to the particular patient or a particular human being. So, in that api therapy there is a separate treatment called bee venom therapy. If a person is having back pain or joint pains he will be advised to take bee venom therapy where he will be scheduled to take bee venom therapy for 8 or 10 weeks. He will be introduced to getting sting by the bees for that single sting of bee. In US and China they are charging almost 20 to 30 dollars. Even in Canada to get a single bee sting we have to pay 20 to 200 to 400 rupees. So, that much amount of medicinal value the bee venom is having. So, wonderful to hear all that Bharat. So, how has been your journey into this field? Bharat tell us something about that. My background I am a mechanical engineer. I graduated in 2019 and after that I started preparing for my UPSC exams. And during that UPSC journey I started beekeeping as a hobby so that I can explain my purposeful hobby in my personal details. So, that is how I started beekeeping. But after seeing the impact that I made in the farmers life I started to think this is my life purpose. How to help the farmers to set up day one bee and starting to give free training to the farmers and giving beekeeping boxes to the farmers who are asking me to set the farm. Now you have turned beekeeping into a passion and you are dispensing knowledge and information to people about this and the benefits of beekeeping. So, how far have you succeeded in that? What has been the impact of this journey of yours when you are interacting with people and spreading this knowledge? My mission is to take this beekeeping to at least a million farmers and students. So far I have conducted training to almost 2000 farmers and students. And more than 50 farmers started beekeeping after getting training and we are supporting them through our video calls and all those things. And most of the farmers are doing successful and I will always ask the farmers to start beekeeping now to produce so much honey. Start beekeeping so that you will get productive increase your farm. That is the main purpose of starting beekeeping. So, because of the supply of flour and sources and nectar will fluctuate from season to season. So, in the season the nectar source will be limited so that we will not harvest as much as honey during summer season. So, some farmers after starting beekeeping in terms of honey production they will be getting little disappointments. But when a farmer starts beekeeping to increase the productivity they will be getting so much benefits. Definitely, I can see and there are like multiple areas where you know the benefit comes to a farmer or a person. Its agriculture productivity increases via pollination and then of course the revenue that comes from selling honey and other products also is there. And medicinal values and I think the list goes on and on. So, this is wonderful, whereas you have introduced us to a wonderful topic and a wonderful area which I think Hederto not many people would have paid much heat to. So, you are spreading this awareness about beekeeping. This is wonderful and you have succeeded in your mission to some extent. We hope and we pray that this reaches, this message of yours reaches many, many people and we become a force to reckon with in terms of beekeeping industry. Thank you so much for all the effort that you are putting in Bharat and we wish you all the best and let us hope that we become the beekeepers of the world and wish you all the best. Thank you sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Sustainable beekeeping practices are essential to ensure the continued benefits that bees provide to ecosystems and human societies. Let's take a pledge to spread this message and do our bit for environmental conservation. Goodbye.