Honey growers have come to Chalanbil area to collect honey from different parts of the country like every year. They are enjoying the festival of honey collection and also busy setting up bee boxes. This year the target of honey production has been set at 1500 metric tons. The market value of which will be around 30 crore taka.
Itinerant beekeepers benefit from collecting honey from mustard flowers every year. About 1 lakh 50 thousand hectares of mustard have been cultivated in Chalanbil area this year. When bees collect honey from mustard flowers, the flowers are properly pollinated. As a result, mustard yield increases by 25-30%. According to the officials of the agriculture department, the yield of mustard is also better by collecting honey. The more pollination occurs in mustard flowers, the more mustard production will increase.
Mustard flower ceremony in the vast area of Chalanbil with eight upazilas such as Chatmohar, Bhangura, Faridpur, Singra of Natore; Gurdaspur, Tarash, Salanga and Ullapara of Sirajganj in Greater Chalanbil. The mobile beekeepers have placed beehive boxes next to these mustard fields. Beekeepers from different districts of the country are collecting honey in this way. About five hundred beekeepers are now staying in different fields of Chalanbil with boxes to collect one and a half thousand metric tons of honey. More than 40,000 bee boxes have been installed in the whole of Chalanbil.
Jahangir Alam, president of the North Bengal Beekeepers Association said that beekeepers are suffering due to lack of modern training. Moreover, there is a lack of scientific mother boxes. The beekeepers will collect honey worth one to one and a half crore taka from the current budget. Representatives of various big companies including Pran, Square, AP have already started purchasing honey for the collection of Chalanbil honey.
ARS
