The History of Beekeeping in India: From Ancient Practices to Modern Techniques

India’s relationship with bees stretches back thousands of years – long before the word “apiculture” entered any textbook. From hymns in ancient scriptures to government-funded missions running today, the story of beekeeping in India is one of gradual discovery, colonial-era experimentation, and post-independence institution-building. Understanding this history isn’t just academic. It explains why India is now among the world’s top honey producers and why rural beekeepers today work with tools and systems rooted in decisions made over a century ago.

Ancient roots: bees in Indian civilization 🔗

The earliest evidence of a human-bee relationship in India comes from its oldest literary traditions. The Rig Veda, dating to approximately 1500 BCE, contains direct references to bees and honey – not just as food, but as substances with religious and medicinal significance. Honey appears across multiple Vedic texts including the Atharva Veda, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita, as well as Buddhist scriptures like the Vinaya Pitaka and Jataka tales. This cross-tradition presence confirms that bees were deeply woven into the cultural fabric of ancient India.

Archaeological evidence reinforces the textual record. Rock paintings from the Mesolithic and post-Mesolithic eras, found in Madhya Pradesh and the Pachmarhi region, depict honey collection activities – primarily from the combs of Apis dorsata (rock bee) and Apis cerana. These were not managed colonies but wild nests, and the activity shown is essentially honey hunting rather than beekeeping in the modern sense. Still, this marks the beginning of a long tradition of humans actively seeking out bee products.

The epics add more colour to this picture. The Ramayana describes a “Madhuban” – literally, a honey forest – cultivated by Sugriva, while a separate Madhuban near present-day Mathura is mentioned in the Mahabharata. These literary accounts hint at a rudimentary awareness of managing environments to attract and sustain bee colonies, even if the practice had not yet formalised into apiculture.

Tribal and traditional practices 🔗

Long before scientific beekeeping arrived, various tribal communities across India had developed their own methods of working with bees. Tribes in the hilly regions of Manipur and Nagaland kept bees in hollow wooden logs or earthen vessels. However, the extraction technique – squeezing out honey directly from combs – was crude, often mixing honey with beeswax and killing many bees in the process. In Manipur, a hollow bamboo fitted with a nail was used to pierce combs and channel honey into a barrel.

Perhaps the most striking historical reference to tribal bee management comes from the colonial period. When British forces attacked the eastern coast of present-day Odisha between 1842 and 1849, the Kondha tribe reportedly used tamed bees as a form of defence against them. While the exact technique remains unclear, the account confirms that certain communities had developed enough control over bee colonies to deploy them strategically – a remarkable feat that mainstream histories rarely acknowledge.

The colonial era: early attempts at scientific beekeeping 🔗

The transition from traditional honey hunting to organised beekeeping did not happen smoothly. Unsuccessful attempts at scientific beekeeping were made in West Bengal in 1880 and in Punjab and Kullu between 1883 and 1884, focused on keeping Apis cerana. These experiments failed largely because European hive designs, developed for Apis mellifera (the western honeybee), were poorly suited to the biology and behaviour of Indian bee species. The year 1884 also saw the publication of the first beekeeping handbook in India – Hand Book of Beekeeping by Douglas, a British officer in the Post and Telegraph Department.

Reverend Newton and the Newton Hive 🔗

Reverend Henry Christopher McClelland Newton, often called the Father of Beekeeping in India, arrived in the country in 1860 as a Christian missionary. Impressed by India’s rich floral resources and the potential for apiculture, he spent decades experimenting with hive design. The breakthrough came around 1910-1911 when Newton, working in the Kanyakumari district of Kerala, successfully designed a smaller hive specifically suited to the Apis cerana indica – the Indian hive bee. This became known as the Newton Hive.

What made the Newton Hive significant was its fit with the actual biology of its intended occupant. Apis cerana is smaller than the European Apis mellifera, builds smaller colonies, and behaves differently in terms of comb construction and movement within the hive. A hive designed around these realities, rather than borrowed from European practice, was exactly what Indian beekeeping needed. Between 1911 and 1917, Newton trained rural people in Kerala to harvest honey using this hive, laying the foundation for organised commercial beekeeping in India. The activity then spread – to Travancore in 1917, Mysore in 1925, Madras in 1931, Punjab in 1933, and Uttar Pradesh in 1938.

Building institutions: 1930s to independence 🔗

The 1930s marked the beginning of institutional recognition for beekeeping in India. The Agriculture College in Coimbatore (now Tamil Nadu Agricultural University) included beekeeping in its curriculum in 1931. By the close of that decade, the All India Beekeepers Association had been established (1938-39), and its branches spread rapidly across states and districts. In 1945, the first Central Beekeeping Research Station was established in Punjab under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), followed by satellite research centres in Coimbatore, Andhra Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh.

The role of independence leaders in championing beekeeping is often underemphasised. Mahatma Gandhi recognised the economic importance of beekeeping and included it in his rural development programmes. Several freedom movement figures took up beekeeping as part of their development work, including Smt. Rama Devi and Manmohan Chaudhary from Odisha. Gandhi’s backing gave the practice a moral and political endorsement that helped shift it from a fringe rural activity to a recognised cottage industry.

Post-independence development: KVIC and ICAR 🔗

After 1947, the Government of India moved decisively to institutionalise beekeeping as part of broader rural development. The beekeeping sector was initially governed by the All India Khadi and Village Industries Board (KVIB), which was then reformed into the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) through an Act of Parliament in 1956. KVIC’s mandate covered planning, promoting, and organising village industries, with beekeeping as one of its key pillars. The Commission provided training programmes, distributed equipment, offered financial assistance, and helped build the supply chains that connected rural beekeepers to markets.

Central Bee Research and Training Institute (CBRTI) 🔗

In 1962, KVIC – in collaboration with the Maharashtra State Khadi and Village Industries Board – established the Central Bee Research and Training Institute (CBRTI) in Pune. This became India’s premier facility for honey bee research and scientific training in apiculture. CBRTI’s work spanned bee breeding, disease management, hive design improvement, and forage mapping. Its branches were later established in Kodaikanal, Mahabaleshwar, Kangra, and Kashmir.

A major development followed in 1964, when Apis mellifera – the European honeybee – was successfully introduced into Indian apiculture. This species produces significantly more honey than the native Apis cerana – up to 30-50 kg per colony annually versus 5-10 kg – and was adopted widely in northern and Himalayan regions, driving the growth of migratory beekeeping practices.

ICAR’s coordinated research programme 🔗

In 1981, recognising the need for structured national research, ICAR launched the All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Honey Bee Research and Training, involving agricultural universities across the country. This initiative strengthened scientific understanding of bee health, colony management, and the role of bees in crop pollination. A Central Sector Scheme specifically focused on “Development of Beekeeping for Improving Crop Productivity” was later launched by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1994-95, further embedding beekeeping into the agricultural development agenda.

Modern techniques and today’s beekeeping landscape 🔗

Contemporary Indian beekeeping looks very different from what Reverend Newton started in Kerala. Modern practices include the use of standardised Langstroth hives for Apis mellifera colonies, selective breeding programmes to improve honey yields and disease resistance, integrated pest management for threats like the Varroa mite and wax moth, and commercial pollination services offered to horticulture farmers. Scientific forage mapping – identifying which plants bloom when and where – has also helped beekeepers plan colony movement across seasons.

The National Beekeeping and Honey Mission (NBHM), launched in 2020 under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, represents the most ambitious government effort to date. With a total budget of ₹500 crore, extended through FY 2025-26, the mission operates through three mini missions covering production improvement, post-harvest management, and research and technology generation. It is implemented through the National Bee Board (NBB) and works in coordination with KVIC’s Honey Mission, which was separately launched in 2017-18.

The numbers reflect measurable impact. Honey production in India touched approximately 1.4 lakh metric tonnes in 2024, up from 76,150 metric tonnes in 2013-14. In FY 2023-24, India exported over one lakh metric tonnes of natural honey worth USD 177.5 million, emerging as the world’s second-largest honey exporter – a jump from ninth position in 2020. Infrastructure set up under NBHM includes six world-class honey testing labs, 47 mini labs, 26 honey processing units, and 16 Integrated Beekeeping Development Centres (IBDCs) across states.

Digital tools have entered the picture too. The Madhukranti portal, developed under NBHM, has registered over 14,000 beekeepers and hundreds of honey societies and companies, improving supply chain traceability. The National Centre of Excellence in Beekeeping at IIT Roorkee has added a research and skill-development dimension that links academia directly to field practice.

Six commercially important bee species in India 🔗

India’s beekeeping history is inseparable from its bee biodiversity. Six species of bees have commercial importance in the country: Apis dorsata (rock bee), the Himalayan Apis laboriosa, Apis cerana indica (Indian hive bee), Apis florea (dwarf bee), Apis mellifera (European or Italian bee), and Tetragonula iridipennis (stingless bee). Of these, only Apis cerana and Apis mellifera are amenable to managed colony rearing in artificial hives. Rock bees and dwarf bees are typically harvested from the wild. Stingless bees, traditionally kept in pots and bamboo nodes in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, are gaining renewed attention for their medicinal honey.

From forest to frame: a continuous evolution 🔗

What ties together ancient honey hunters in Madhya Pradesh, Reverend Newton in Kerala, Mahatma Gandhi’s village programmes, and today’s NBHM-funded beekeepers in Bihar is a continuous thread of human curiosity about bees and their products. Each era added something – sacred knowledge, tribal ingenuity, colonial science, institutional research, and now digital infrastructure. The shift from squeezing honeycombs in log hives to running FPO-linked apiaries registered on a government portal is enormous, but the underlying relationship between Indian farmers and their bees remains unbroken.

For anyone entering beekeeping today – as a student, a rural entrepreneur, or a researcher – this history provides more than context. It explains why the Newton Hive matters, why KVIC was chosen to anchor rural apiculture, and why India’s bee diversity is both an ecological asset and a practical resource waiting to be better utilised.

What do you think? Given that India has over 20,000 bee plant species catalogued by researchers, do you think current beekeeping policy makes the most of this floral diversity? And considering how the Newton Hive was specifically designed for Apis cerana, should modern hive design innovation for Indian species receive the same dedicated research attention today?

References

1. https://ancientindianwisdom.com/bees-and-honey-in-ancient-india
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping_in_India
3. https://testbook.com/articles/father-of-apiculture
4. https://www.notesonzoology.com/india/apiculture/history-and-development-of-apiculture-in-india/115
5. https://www.ijraset.com/research-paper/role-of-the-khadi-and-village-industries-commission
6. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1748-5967.70069
7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313692521_Beekeeping_in_India
8. https://www.pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1697113
9. https://ddnews.gov.in/en/sweet-revolution-gains-pace-the-beekeeping-mission-boosts-rural-earnings-strengthens-indias-agri-economy/