Rampur. There are beehives lined up in the gardens and courtyards around the house. Jayanarayan Neupane, who likes to stay around the hive from dawn to dusk, now gets crazy when he sees the hive.
The beehive had become not only a source of income for Ujj but also a way to spend his days. He used to spend his days happily with the hive, and when he saw the hive, his heart felt heavy. Neupane, a farmer from Kisantole, Rampur Municipality-6, is worried after the bees in the hive died and disappeared.
After the sudden death of the bees, it was like swallowing or vomiting his business. When he got to spend his days with the bees in the garden, he didn’t realize how much time had passed. Even though I used to spend my time taking care of the bees, these days I don’t feel like going into the bee garden at all. Seeing the empty beehives has left him distraught.
‘I used to spend all my time taking care of the bees in the garden, but now that all the bees have died, it has become difficult to spend the day at home,’ he said. ‘In the past, I would spend my days in the garden except for mealtimes. Even when relatives, friends, and acquaintances came to my house, I would wander into the garden. Now, I don’t even feel like going inside the garden. I feel sad when I see the beehives empty.’
He says that he had to bear a loss of about Rs 700,000 due to the death of the bees in the farm due to the spraying of pesticides by his neighbors on the crops. He said that all the bees prepared in 85 hives were damaged by the pesticide. Neupane, who has been operating the bee industry since 2055 BS by establishing ‘Neupane Bee Industry’, said that this is the first time he has had to bear a big loss.
This year, he was preparing to sell 60 hives of bees along with the hives. Demand had already come from various places before the bees were ready. But while preparing to send it, all the bees suddenly perished.
‘The bees have suffered a great deal when a neighbor sprayed pesticides in the field. This is the first time in his business that he has suffered such damage. After the bees in the hive died, he does not want to return to the garden. Seeing the empty hive makes him sad,’ he said.
He spends his time in the garden taking care of the bees. The bees were his livelihood. He ran a business in his own home to support his old age and to inform the new generation about the beekeeping business.
Despite his age of about eight decades, he used to be agile and enjoy bees. He has a kind of deep love for bees. He said that bees started dying due to pesticides from the first week of last Falgun. Neupane, who has been running this business for a long time, said that he had suffered losses in the form of such an epidemic in his lifetime. He expressed his grief that he felt more pain than losing his parents.
‘The pollen of bees makes crops and plants better, bees leave for grazing at 3:30 in the morning and return to the hive at 9:00. Since they go to graze immediately after spraying pesticides on crops in the morning, the bees have been killed by consuming nectar. If the pesticides had been used after 5:00 in the evening, there would have been less damage,’ he said.
Neupane has been earning Rs 500,000 to Rs 600,000 annually from selling honey, and he says that he has been selling hives with 80 honeycombs on an average. A hive with honeycombs is being sold for Rs 9,000, while an empty hive is being sold for Rs 5,000. He has experience that selling with shells is beneficial for the businessmen.
Bees and hives are sent from here to various districts including Palpa, Syangja, Tanahun, Nawalparasi, Gulmi, Jhapa. Since the beehives are prepared in the industry itself, people come from various districts to purchase hives.
He demands that the local body should bring awareness programs to farmers to protect bees. He says that if farmers are informed about the appropriate time to spray pesticides after studying the beekeeping area, farmers will also use pesticides at the appropriate time.
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