Muazzin’s success in beekeeping

In the last week of December, 2021, I heard an interesting story of a young man, who has built his dream around the bees. His name is Muazzin Hossain. It was a quite cold morning when I left for Manikganj's Singair upazila to see his activities. The nature was covered with thick fog and the villages just started to wake when I was close to Kanchan Nagar village. I noticed many bee boxes along vast mustard fields and Muazzin was already there. The young man, aged just over 30 years, greeted me with a big smile. The crazy youth did his BBA, and MBA from a private university. Usually, men and women of such age dream of government or corporate jobs. But Muazzin was different. "While studying MBA, I saw one of your videos on bee farming on YouTube which attract my interest. Then I started studying on bee farming," Muazzin said.

"My father was shocked when I told him that I want to start farming bees at home," he added. One day Muazzin left his home and went to a famous beekeeper in Bagerhat and requested him to teach him about beekeeping. During his stay there he only had three times meal in exchange of his whole day labour. In the next three months, he learned everything about beekeeping, Muazzin said, adding that, "My beekeeper guru gave me four bee boxes as gift when I left his place, and now I have 64 bee boxes of my own."

For Muazzin, beekeeping is more than just a commercial aspect. He keeps on learning the miraculous life cycle of the bees. In the last six and a half years, this young man has been able to go deeper into the extraordinary life of the bees. In other words, he is a keen observer of the bees' life cycle.

He was sharing his experience, bees mainly collect honey from fresh flowers. For half a kg of honey, 600 bees have to travel around 20 lakh (2 million) flowers and worker bee has to travel a distance of about 14.5 lakh kilometres. Muazzin is not only impressed with the orderly management and honey production, but also with the chain of command among the bees. Every bee box is a colony and each colony has a specific system of governance. There is also change in power when necessary. There is a natural process of protection and care of the most influential queen bee in every colony.

Finally, I saw a queen bee of one of the beehives roaming around hundreds of bees, mostly soldier bees. One don bee was relentlessly protecting the queen while the worker bees were continuously cleaning queen's path. The queen was looking for a place to lay eggs in the beehive and finally laid some eggs in several places. Interestingly when worker bees comprehend that the queen cannot produce quality eggs, they all kill the queen and bring a new queen to their hive.

As far as I know, there are about 25,000 beekeepers in Bangladesh and honey has turned into an industry now. The country produces 10,000 tonnes of honey against the demand of 30,000 tonnes, which is usually produced from black cumin, coriander, litchi and mustard flowers. Honey is mostly collected from mustard flower, but in the southern part of the country, honey is collected from the Sundarbans.

In the last few years, many educated young entrepreneurs have started commercial beekeeping and honey production. "Although, the wholesale market fluctuates, the retail market is not bad at all," Muazzin said. A total of 64 boxes or colonies costs Muazzin around Tk 4 lakh (USD 4,654) throughout the year and he gets a profit of around Tk 4 lakh.

I have been reporting on various issues, including commercial expansion of bee farming, market opportunities and agricultural credits for beekeepers. As a result, bee farming has been included in the agricultural credit policy of the Bangladesh Bank. The demand and market for our local honey are increasing. Things are turning out to be positive. More positively, educated young entrepreneurs like Muazzin are coming to beekeeping that can bring new opportunities to this industry. I believe, beekeeping industry will go a long way with inquisitive minds, confidence and sincerity of farmers like Muazzin.