‘Apiary on Wheels’, a unique concept designed by KVIC for the easy upkeep and migration of Bee Boxes having live Bee colonies, was flagged off today by the Union Minister of MSME Shri Nitin Gadkari in Delhi, in the presence of Shri V.K. Saxena, Chairman KVIC.

Congratulating the Chairman KVIC, Shri Nitin Gadkari said, “Bee Keeping looks easy but has many intricate difficulties which only a beekeeper would understand. Apiary on Wheels 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.”

Aligned with the vision of Prime Minister, KVIC launched Honey Mission in 2017 and has been training beekeepers, distributing Bee Boxes and helping rural, educated but unemployed youth to earn extra income through beekeeping activities, at their doorstep. However, bee keeping involves laborious and mentally challenging tasks such as placing the bee boxes in a strategic position so as to provide enough nectar from flowers to the bees, maintaining the bees during summers and migrating the bee boxes accordingly to fulfil the nourishment needs of the bees etc. KVIC has been continuously evolving new ways so as to make this process more easy and less laborious.

Highlighting the benefits of the Apiary on Wheels, Shri VK Saxena said, “Apiary on wheels 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. This is 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. 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. The Apiary on Wheels 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. Not only this, the Apiary on Wheels also has sugar drips which helps to feed the bees in the summer season. The Apiary on Wheels is like an attachment which can be easily connected with a Tractor or a Trolley and may be pulled to any suitable destination. Specially, in summers, the beekeepers usually adopted crude methods to feed the bees and many bees used to die in the process. 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.

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.

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