The honey farmers of Chirirbandar in Dinajpur have collected 40 tonnes honey which worth around Taka one crore and 20 lakh from just 13 lychee gardens.
The honey collectors have set up many boxes which are used as honeycombs in the garden. The farmers of the area believe that the honey bees will contribute in pollination as well and the lychee production will be 25 per cent higher than the previous year.
Lychee cultivation has become popular as less efforts and cost are needed to get a good profit from it. Farmers of Chirirbandar have cultivated lychee on some 510 hectares of land. The gardens are covered with lychee buds. Two owners of Lychee gardens, Hanif Khan and Arif Hossain, have allowed many honey collectors to set up their beehive boxes to cultivate honey here. There are some 200 lychee trees in their gardens. The honey collectors have set up around 150 boxes in some 13 gardens to collect honey.
Honey collector Dulal Hossain Talukder said, “They are following the scientific method to cultivate honey in the area. We have set up around 200 wooden boxes as Broad Honeybee Colony and Nucleus Honeybee Colony
Bees collect and fill the boxes in just 15 days. We collect around huge amount of honey from the boxes.”
The bees also play an important role in pollination. So the farmers get a better yield than others in such gardens. The honey farmers have been making good profit by selling the honey in local markets.
Upazila Agriculture Officer M Mahmudul Hasan said, “All the lychee gardens are full of buds this year. So a large number of bees are coming to collect honey from the gardens. The bees play a vital role in pollination as well. So the farmers of the Upazila are expecting a bumper yield this year.”