New Delhi (NVI): ‘Apiary on Wheels’, a unique concept for maintaining and servicing bee boxes and live bee colonies across India, was launched today.
While flagging it off, Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Nitin Gadkari said bee keeping looks easy but has many intricate difficulties which only a beekeeper would understand.
“It will make the migration easy, the maintenance easy, easy feeding of bees and it will also help the bees to sustain even in extreme summers,” he said.
“KVIC has been continuously evolving new ways so as to make this process more easy and less laborious,” he added.
Highlighting the benefits of the Apiary on Wheels, KVIC Chairman VK Saxena said, “it is a holistic approach to address the challenges faced by the beekeepers. It is designed so as to reduce the labour and cost of maintaining and upkeeping Bee Boxes and live bee colonies across India.”
Saxena termed the initiative as an example of ‘out of the box thinking’ which KVIC has adopted to benefit maximum number of people in India and help generate livelihood at the doorsteps.
“Apiary on Wheels is a platform which can carry 20 Bee Boxes from one place to another without any difficulty,” he informed.
“Two large wheels on either side of the Apiary on Wheels and 4 separate compartments with independent doors, having 5 bee boxes each help the platform to remain intact without disturbing the live bee colonies,” he said.
“This is also connected with a solar panel system which automatically triggers a fan inside the compartment as soon as the temperature reaches 35 degree centigrade or above,” he said.
“Not only this, the Apiary on Wheels also has sugar drips which helps to feed the bees in the summer season,” he said.
“It is like an attachment which can be easily connected with a Tractor or a Trolley and may be pulled to any suitable destination,” he said.
“Specially, in summers, the beekeepers usually adopted crude methods to feed the bees and many bees used to die in the process,” he added.
“This concept of migration, cooling with the help of solar panels and sugar drips with zero risk to the lives of bees, will prevent any damages to the bee boxes or bee colonies and help produce quality honey,” he further added.
As a pilot project the Apiary on Wheels will be placed near the mustard farms near the Delhi border under the supervision of local bee keepers and KVIC and after successful implementation the concept will be replicated on a mass scale across India.
