Inspiring Journey: SR Venkatesh’s inspiring beekeeping journey from a single beehive to a thriving model farm

Inspiring Journey: Bees are essential to one-third of the world’s food output, supporting farmers’ livelihoods and providing food for every family via their quest for nectar. These arguments—do they not enough to shield them? Honey bees are the only insects that take as much from Nature and the environment as they provide, despite the fact that 20,000 different species of bees fertilize every continent. According to a 2019 UN study, bees support about one-third of the world’s food output and are a significant source of income for many rural communities.

While many people are researching the issue and raising awareness of the need to protect bees in our own city, SR Venkatesh is one of the individuals who has made substantial progress in this area. Venkatesh is encouraging farmers and people all around the nation to embrace beekeeping as a method to improve agricultural output, as well as a chance to rekindle a traditional vocation and establish a connection with nature, via practical seminars and awareness campaigns.

Since 2016, Venkatesh has had a strong interest in beekeeping. “The Art of Living’s Sri Sri Institute of Agricultural Sciences and Technology Trust” is led by him as CEO. She presently leads monthly beekeeping courses for farmers, architects, and other beekeeping enthusiasts from around the nation. She also maintains a model farm at the Art of Living International Center in Bengaluru.

Crafting A Delightful Scenario

You would assume that Venkatesh would naturally be drawn to this project, but he informs us that things are really rather different. “After retiring, I worked at the Art of Living campus in Bengaluru to further my interest in agricultural and ecological farming methods. I was asked how many beehive boxes we kept on campus by an elderly citizen I met one day. I questioned why, on a campus known for its greenery and abundant wildlife, we needed beehive boxes. That’s when I started learning about bee preservation,” he remembers answering.

Farmers began using chemical farming in the 1960s, thinking that it would increase productivity, as the green revolution got underway. Contrarily, Venkatesh points out that chemical farming kills a variety of species, including fish, birds, and insects, as well as contaminating the soil, water, and plants. Because bees are essential to food production and the livelihood of farmers, as well as those of us who rely on their food, these pesticides have an adverse effect on biodiversity, particularly when they hurt bees. Honey bees are responsible for 75% of agricultural yield. Thus, farmers that maintain beehive boxes on their fields get 8–10 kg of honey each box in addition to 30–40% more yield, he says.

Equipped with this information, Venkatesh and his team began by putting up fifty boxes on campus. Today, that number has increased significantly, and in an effort to inspire people to see the advantages of beekeeping on farms and acquire firsthand knowledge of the craft, a model farm with sunflower fields and banana plantations has been constructed.

Venkatesh and his team are educating a diverse range of individuals about beekeeping via a number of methods. Venkatesh and his team devote an entire segment to teaching farmers about beekeeping and its benefits on the quality and quantity of farm produce, as well as the positive impact on their livelihoods. One way they are reaching out to farmers is through a number of awareness initiatives, where farmers from Karnataka and other States (like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra) join their natural farming workshops.

“We hear this most frequently: we want honey, but we’re afraid of bee stings. We like to compare beekeeping to meditation. Bees won’t hurt us unless we provoke them to. They instruct us in maintaining composure and discipline,” he says.

Venkatesh informs us that he wants to promote this practice on three levels when we question him about his vision for the future. First, he encourages students and young people to start beekeeping as a side business. Second, he wants to connect with farmers via government programs to get them to sign up for the beekeeping courses. Thirdly, he hopes to bring back beekeeping as a career nationwide.

In the past, beekeeping was a family-run business. We refer to them as Jēnusākaṇedāra in Kannada. However, many of those who practiced this for years have moved away from it in the pursuit of greater goals. He said, “We want to teach more individuals to become professional beekeepers and resuscitate this profession.

He continues by saying that a number of his team’s agricultural supervisors had completed IGNOU’s six-month beekeeping program and received certification to pursue this career.