High in the hills of Uttarakhand, where the air is fresh and wildflowers bloom freely, a quiet revolution is buzzing, led by humble beekeepers and their tiny, winged companions. For Raghubeer Negi, a seasoned beekeeper of over two decades, caring for bees is a way of life. Since 2014, he’s been part of a growing effort to revive traditional beekeeping and protect the essential role bees play in our ecosystem.
Bees are vital pollinators, responsible for helping about 75% of the world’s food crops reproduce. Fruits, vegetables, grains, and even the plants that livestock graze on all depend on the pollination bees provide. Without them, our plates and supermarket shelves would look alarmingly empty.
But over recent decades, bee populations have been steadily declining. Habitat loss, environmental changes, pesticides, and a lack of awareness have all contributed. Yet, as Negi sees it, the situation isn’t hopeless. With care and commitment, there’s still time to turn things around. “People used to build their homes with bees in mind,” Negi reflects. “Wall hives were common, and bees were part of the household.” But times have changed. Modern cement homes have replaced mud houses, ancient trees are vanishing, and chemical-laden farming has taken root. Add in the disturbances caused by mobile towers, and bees are struggling to find their way back to their hives and into our lives.
Rakesh Gupta, a veteran beekeeper based in Noida, believes that many factors leading to the extinction of bees are human-induced. “There is ignorance, indifference, and insensitivity on our part,” he points out. As part of the Golden Hive Foundation, a women-led initiative that works across India — rural Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and even in Delhi’s urban green spaces, Gupta runs awareness workshops for colleges and local communities to promote ethical and empathetic beekeeping.
“Our fear of bees can be quite a hurdle. Many of us grew up associating bees with stings and danger. Often, we don’t even know the difference between a honeybee and a wasp,” says Gupta. “But bees only sting in self-defense.” He believes creating year-round foraging opportunities and nesting habitats for different bee species not only keeps them healthy but also keeps them occupied and less likely to cross paths with humans.
Climate change can’t be ignored either. “The weather and climate are changing way too fast for bees to keep up. What used to take a hundred years in terms of temperature rise has now happened in just the last 15. Bees simply don’t have enough time to adapt the way they used to.”
Bees give us honey, which has long been prized in healing remedies and beauty treatments. Whether it’s soothing a sore throat or nourishing skin, honey has quietly earned its place as a natural wellness staple. Negi and over 600 other beekeepers who are part of his community in Uttarakhand produce this golden nectar with a mix of time-tested wisdom and modern tools. They raise Apis cerana indica, a native Indian bee species, across the hills of Uttarakhand. Originally, they relied on standard wooden bee boxes promoted by national horticulture boards. But mountain weather, which can be both unpredictable and extreme, has proved too harsh for those lightweight designs.
“So we adapted,” Negi says. “We began building thicker boxes, and even mud hives using local materials like cow dung, chaff, and soil. They’re low-cost, naturally insulated, and the bees thrive in them year-round.”
But not all tradition serves bees well. Older methods of harvesting honey, like smoking bees out of hives with burning cow dung, often killed a portion of the colony and damaged the eggs and larvae. Today, Negi’s team uses controlled smokers fueled by smoldering cotton cloth. This results in less stress for the bees, fewer casualties, and intact honeycombs.
Even the process of extracting honey has improved. Instead of slicing open honeycombs, a practice that destroyed the bees’ home, modern tools allow beekeepers to gently spin out the honey, leaving the structure and the developing brood unharmed.
Negi is quick to highlight the contrast between large-scale honey producers and the slow, sustainable approach practiced in the hills. “We only harvest once, after the bees have sealed the honeycombs,” he explains. “That seal means the honey is ready and has ripened naturally inside the hive by wind and time.”
In commercial operations, beekeepers may extract honey two or three times from the same hive, often before it’s matured. The result is honey with a higher water content, which ferments quickly. To extend its shelf life, it’s often treated with chemicals, compromising its purity.
While honey often takes the spotlight, it’s just one part of the story. Gupta wants us to widen our lens. “Most people only associate bees with honey. Pollination would be second, and perhaps limited to those with some academic interest. Even farmers often don’t know enough about the benefits of pollination.” Gupta points out. “But only about 3% of bee species produce honey. The rest, which are often solitary, are still powerful pollinators. Yet their contributions go unseen and underappreciated.”
These lesser-known species, crucial to local ecosystems, are also facing extinction due to habitat loss, monocropping (only one crop is planted in thousands of acres, which leaves no nectar or pollen for them in crops like rice or wheat. “So, you have depleted the resource base of the bees) and urbanisation. The bees, especially the ones that can’t be migrated, have nowhere to go,” he explains.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of bees: social bees and solitary bees. Social bees are the ones you often see in large hives, where thousands live and work together. Some of these species can be managed by humans, like in beekeeping, but others can’t.
“In cities, the challenge is that they aren’t really resource-rich for bees. Sure, there might be greenery, but not all greenery is useful. Just because there are trees doesn’t mean they’re feeding the bees, or butterflies, or even birds.” Urban landscapes, dominated by ornamental plants and mono-species trees, often fail to support pollinators. But there’s hope in rethinking what we plant.
“We could create small green pockets that are actually beneficial for pollinators. In many urban sectors , we’re focusing on stingless bees. These bees don’t have stingers, so there’s no fear factor, and they’re perfect for urban beekeeping.”
When Gupta started beekeeping in 2004, he realises that most newcomers lacked access to foundational knowledge.“People jump in without understanding basic principles. Bees get exploited, overworked, and undernourished, and the honey gets compromised,” he says.
The great thing is that the science and methods for managing certain bee species have been around for a long time, like 200 to 300 years. The early beekeepers did the hard work: they studied, documented, tested, and passed down a wealth of knowledge. It’s all laid out for us, like receiving a manual on a platter. It just needs to be applied.
