Honey seller struggles to retain livelihood

Beekeeper sells honey to herbal stores to earn a living

FAISALABAD: The Covid-19 pandemic has left a severe impact on the sale of honey in Gojra tehsil of Toba Tek Singh district.

Roadside honey seller Abdul Ghaffar, a resident of Chak180GB, Gojra tehsil told The Express Tribune that he travels a distance of 38km starting from Toba Tek Singh to Jhang Branch Canal on his motorcycle in search of livelihood. His work was associated with old banyan and sheesham tree hives along both sides of the 132-year-old canal.

He added that he used to sell and provide honey to high-ranking officers and herbal stores in various cities, earning Rs3,000 to Rs4,000 on a daily basis, but the coronavirus outbreak had forced him to sit on roadside. “I sit here with a sickle in my hand and a bucket half filled with honey, with hives placed on land. I signal passersby as well as passengers to buy my honey products.”

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He explained that he dealt with every customer smilingly and asked for Rs1,200 per kilogramme for honey. While resorting to innovative ways of marketing, he reportedly proves to customers the purity of his product through four techniques to check and confirm purity of the honey.

He maintained that on pouring honey, if a paper gets wet from the backside, it is pure and if the honey does not change its colour for long without freezing, it is genuine. “When a drop of honey mixes with water, without being dissolved, it is real and if salt does not dissolve, and keeps its real shape intact, then the honey can be called pure.”

He added that when his potential buyers refused to purchase honey due to coronavirus and the lockdown situation, he turned to the roadside setup to earn.

When asked about the way honey was taken off from trees, he elaborated that he climbs on the tree and compels bees to fly away with the help of smoke of cigarettes while covering his head and mouth with a piece of cloth.

According to his assessment, honey of small bees is more beneficial to human health than big bees such as Apis dorsata because the former species extracts honey from multiple types of flowers, while the latter species often depends on sunflowers.

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He further said that he registered himself with the Prime Minister’s Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme but neither was he able to avail that opportunity nor did he receive ration packet from any charitable organisation. He revealed that he had to grease the palm of irrigation officials occasionally to seek permission for extracting honey from trees, otherwise they allegedly threatened to register a case of theft against him.

Ayub Agricultural Research Institute Entomology Director Dr Khawar Jawad said that according to an estimate, by the Honeybee Research Institute (HBRI) under the supervision of National Agricultural Research Centre, Islamabad, there were 27,000 beekeepers in the country having 450,000 colonies with approximately 12,000 metric tonnes of honey production, per year.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2020.