Farmers say they would make more profit from beekeeping if they got help from the government.

Mustard is now grown everywhere in Tangail. A visit to Tangail town, Basail upazila and other places showed rows of beehives set up around the mustard fields. Bees kept in these boxes collect nectar from the mustard flowers and store honey in the hives, and the beekeepers then harvest it.

Beekeeping is bringing farmers financial gain while also reducing unemployment. Many students are even keeping bees alongside their studies to earn money. The honey is sold in different parts of the country and abroad as well. But the beekeepers say they would profit more from beekeeping with government help.

Aminur Rahman of the Santosh Ghoshpara area in Tangail municipality has kept bees for the past 10 years. Describing the trade as profitable, he told Dhaka Tribune: "This year I set up more than a hundred beehives in mustard fields. So far (from December to the first week of January) we have collected about one and a half tonnes of honey. We harvest honey from mustard fields for four months a year. For the other six months the bees are kept by feeding them sugar artificially. This time my costs have been about Tk 2.5 lakh. I hope to make a profit of around Tk 1.5 lakh to Tk 2 lakh. People from different companies buy honey from us."

He added: "December is really the right time to start collecting honey. That is when good mustard flowers bloom in different parts of the district. Depending on size, a box yields 2 to 40 kg of honey, and each box costs Tk 2,000 to Tk 12,000."

Aminur Rahman said: "All my household expenses depend on this. If the government helped us, we would make more profit from beekeeping. But when I went to the deputy commissioner and the agriculture office in the past, I got no help. I also collect honey from lychee."

According to the district Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), the target for mustard cultivation in Tangail this year was 28,000 hectares, but mustard was grown on about 39,000 hectares, meaning it was cultivated on about 10,000 hectares more.

Abdur Razzak, deputy director of the DAE in Tangail, told Dhaka Tribune: "This year more mustard has been grown in the district than the target, and more beehives have been set up. So far about 50,000 kg of honey has been produced, and more will be produced in the coming days."

He said: "Keeping bees next to mustard fields increases the mustard yield by 15 to 20 per cent through pollination. Even a few years ago, mustard growers would stop beekeepers from setting up hives on their land. They believed bees would reduce the mustard yield. But our agriculture officials were able to explain that beekeeping does not reduce the yield at all; rather, the yield improves. Since then mustard growers have been helping to set up beehives beside their land."

Tangail district has the country's second-largest mustard cultivation, after Manikganj.

Source: Dhaka Tribune. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.