New Delhi: A farm crisis is humming across India, particularly impacting Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. It’s not about rainfall or fertiliser prices but the cost of pollination. With the bee population dropping, farmers are now renting hives from commercial apiaries, an added expense that’s eating into their already thin profit margins.
“You cannot tame bees in our areas. Hence, local beekeeping is not an option for us,” said Lakh Ram Maurya, 59, a mango farmer from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. “Except for 17 mango-growing belt areas in Uttar Pradesh, beekeeping is being practised elsewhere, but it’s becoming more expensive every day. We have to rent them from other places, including states like Punjab and Haryana.”
The cost of renting and maintaining hives can run to over Rs 2 lakh yearly, but often, it’s the best alternative they have.
Around 70 per cent of India’s flowering crops depend on these tiny helpers. Without them, fewer flowers turn into fruits, vegetable yields shrink, and farmers’ livelihoods take a hit. A 2021 study published in the peer-reviewed journal One Earth stated that around 25 per cent fewer species of bees were recorded between 2006 and 2015 than before 1990.
“Wild bee pollination is fundamental to the reproduction of hundreds of thousands of wild plant species and is key to securing adequate yields in about 85% of food crops,” said the study by scientists Eduardo E Zattara and Marcelo A Aizen, titled ‘Worldwide occurrence records suggest a global decline in bee species richness’.
The first long-term global assessment of bee diversity, the study’s goal was to determine whether a decline in pollinators was confined to specific regions or had a worldwide impact.
Farmers in India attest they are feeling the sting. They are now adopting various solutions, ranging from beekeeping to manual pollination and planting flowers that attract pollinators.
“Some farmers are renting bee hives or managing their own bees to ensure sufficient pollination for their crops. Some are adopting integrated pest management (IPM) techniques, which involve using fewer or more targeted pesticides and avoiding spraying during bloom times to protect pollinators,” Sheeraz Ahmad Dar, an apple farmer from Shopian, Jammu and Kashmir, told ThePrint.
Altogether, addressing the lack of bees can be an expensive affair.
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High price tag of pollination
Keeping crops productive now means investing in bees. Renting hives, maintaining colonies, and moving them across states have become part of many farmers’ list of costs.
Typically, beekeeping has been a costly venture in India. For an individual beekeeper, setting up an apiary with 50 colonies involves an upfront investment of around Rs 1.78 lakh for equipment and infrastructure, and about Rs 1.34 lakh in yearly running costs. When factors such as depreciation and interest are added, the total annual expense comes to an estimated Rs 1.69 lakh.
In group ventures, where several beekeepers operate collectively, the initial investment is slightly lower at about Rs 1.52 lakh. However, their annual operating expenses rise to around Rs 2.33 lakh due to shared management and logistics, bringing the overall yearly expenditure close to Rs 2.85 lakh.
Bees are carried in sealed wooden boxes and transported on trucks, usually at night when temperatures are cooler and the insects remain inside their hives. Beekeepers handle the setup once the boxes reach the farms.
“Due to the excessive use of pesticides, natural bees have almost vanished, leading to a sharp decline in profits. Profit margins have reduced by at least 10 per cent due to the added cost. Though the selling price also depends on other things like demand and current market value,” said Lucknow farmer Lakh Ram.
He added that a 50-colony apiary in the state typically costs between Rs 1.7 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh before government subsidies, which can cover up to 40 per cent.
Scaling down makes it more affordable, though the returns are also lower. Om Prakash Maurya, a beekeeper and farmer from Uttar Pradesh, said a 10-colony setup costs between Rs 55,000 and Rs 60,000 before subsidies.
“The cost of renting a hive also depends on the species of bees,” he added.
For small farmers operating on thin profit margins, these added costs threaten both short-term returns and long-term viability. Farmers in Bihar and Haryana echoed the same sentiment. Every method affects their pocket one way or the other. Changing cropping patterns means higher fertiliser and seed costs, manual pollination adds labour expenses, and reducing pesticide use can lower yields.
“Not all farmers can afford beekeeping,” said 70-year-old Bachcha Pratap Singh, president of the Litchi Growers Association of Bihar. “In our Muzaffarpur farm, we usually rely on manual pollination, like collecting the pollen in boxes by hand, which significantly increases the labour cost.”
The yearly maintenance of a bearing orchard is estimated at around Rs 65,930 per hectare, with labour accounting for about 30 per cent of that.
What farmers in India are facing is part of a wider fallout from declining pollination, not just for livelihoods, but for life itself.
A 2022 study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives estimated that, globally, 3-5 per cent of fruit, vegetable, and nut production is lost due to inadequate pollination. This, the study added, led to an estimated 427,000 excess deaths annually from lost healthy food consumption and associated diseases.
“Lost food production was concentrated in lower-income countries, whereas impacts on food consumption and mortality attributable to insufficient pollination were greater in middle- and high-income countries with higher rates of noncommunicable disease,” it states.
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Adapting to fewer pollinators
To cope with the absence of bees, some farmers are changing what and how they grow.
In Jammu and Kashmir, some apple growers have moved from Ambri and Red Delicious varieties to Gala, which can self-pollinate and needs fewer bees, said Shopian apple farmer Dar.
Then there is intercropping—planting companion crops such as mustard that attract pollinators back to their fields. But in Haryana, growing mustard is now harder due to the lack of bees. A 63-year-old farmer from the state who practices intercropping said that with the bee population thinning, the cost of producing mustard has risen by at least Rs 10,000 per hectare over the past two to three years.
To maintain yields, he transports mustard seeds hundreds of kilometres by truck for planting once soil conditions are suitable.
“Manual migration is labour-intensive and requires skilled workers. For an oilseed like mustard, it’s essential,” he said. “The crop needs repeated attention during the flowering phase, and costs vary depending on distance because of transport expenses.”
Yet many of these efforts are undermined by rampant use of pesticides due to low awareness. Some common chemicals that affect pollinators, especially bees, are Neonicotinoids, Fenthion, Dimethoate, Monocrotophos, Malathion, and Mancozeb. These can affect bees through contaminated pollen and nectar, disrupting their ability to forage, navigate, and reproduce, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
“Most farmers are not aware of when to use pesticides. Bees are active only during certain times of the day, mostly in the morning and evening when the sun is not so strong,” said Debjani Dey, former head of entomology at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute.
She added that there are around 20,000 species of bees in the world, and India is home to about 600. Apart from pesticides, monocropping and climate change also affect the population of pollinators in India.
Though the Indian government promotes beekeeping and pollinator conservation through programmes such as the National Beekeeping & Honey Mission (NBHM), systematic data on wild pollinator populations are lacking.
“There are no such policies for the tiny insects as of now. However, there are 26 centres across India where we teach the farmers how to domesticate them,” said Manoj Kumar Jat, assistant scientist at Hisar Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Haryana.
Meanwhile, the silence keeps growing in the fields and orchards, even as farmers try to get the buzz back.
“I’ve been noticing a steady decline in wild bees and other insects since the early 2000s,” said Dar.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)