In a first, migratory honey bees get ‘warm womb’ to stay back in winters in Kashmir

A new set of protocols and scientific intervention in honey bee farming in Jammu and Kashmir will finally allow beekeepers to rear colonies in sub-zero temperatures, instead of physically migrating hives to the plains for around six months with reported 30% mortality. As its spinoff, Kashmir has also recorded its first mono-floral apple honey. 

On January 29, when the Kashmir Valley was under a layer of snow, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR-IIIM), Pulwama, invited around 200 orchardists to the Bonera farm to demonstrate the first surviving bee colony of Apis mellifera, a migratory bee species at the core of the production of around 2,000 metric tonnes of honey annually worth ₹12.5 lakh.