WILD HONEY YIELD FALLEN IN KERALA

WILD HONEY

YIELD FALLEN IN KERALA

The wild honey yield in Kerala has fallen sharply this year due to climatic change in the form of heavy unseasonal rains, hurting tribals in areas like Wayanad district, for whom the forest produce is their main source of supplementary income. According to experts and honey collectors, climate change in the form of heavy unseasonal rains was the primary reason for the reduced honey output from the Wayanad Wild Life Sanctuary (WWLS)and adjacent forests.
Wild honey enjoys great demand from the ayurvedic industry because of its purity and quality compared to cultured honey. Untimely rains have caused nearly 75 per cent of hives to perish, P Madhavan, the tribal chief of the Ponkuzhy Kattunayakka settlement, said.

Procurement of wild honey by the Sulthan Bathery ST Cooperative Society fell by 56.8 per cent from 21,000 kg in 2009-10, the secretary of the society, George -- who goes by a single name -- said. V Kesavan, the president of the Kerala State Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Cooperative Federation, the apex body of tribal cooperative societies, said all 32 societies under it have reported a sharp fall in wild honey yield. Tribesmen, especially the Kattunayakka community, are the worst-hit due to the falling wild honey output, as harvesting honey is their main source of income during the lean rainy season. "The normal honey harvesting season is from April to September. But this year, we stopped collection by June-end as the yield is very low," Chippi, a tribesman that goes by a single name, said.

"When we went to collect honey we found most of the hives empty," he added. Tribesmen said the migration of honey bees into Wayanad and adjacent forest areas like the Rajiv Gandhi National Park, Nagarhole, and Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka had decreased sharply. They said they found swarms of dead bees in forests a few weeks ago. "We think the bees could not reach the hives after collecting honey from the wild flowers," they said. Some scientific studies had reported that electromagnetic waves emitted by cellphone towers were harming honey bee populations grievously by crippling their "navigational ability".

But some experts discounted this factor as a major cause for worry, as mobile phone towers are few and far between in Wayanad and adjacent areas. They believe climatic change during the flowering and fruiting stage of trees is the primary reason for the constricted honey yield. Bees collect nectar mainly from the different species of Terminalia (Maruthu) trees inside the forest and honey production is primarily dependent on blooming of this tree, they said.

                                                            Prof. John Kurakar