How India Strengthened Beekeeping Research: Key Milestones and Institutions

India’s relationship with beekeeping is ancient, but its scientific and institutional foundation is surprisingly recent. In the decades following independence, the country made a series of deliberate, structured moves to transform beekeeping from a scattered rural practice into an organized, research-backed industry. Two organizations – the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) – drove much of this transformation. Their combined efforts gave India permanent research infrastructure, trained thousands of beekeepers, and set the stage for what would eventually become one of the world’s significant honey-producing industries.

The foundation: beekeeping before the institutions 🔗

Before the post-independence era brought in formal institutions, beekeeping research in India was fragmented and limited in reach. A 2025 review in the journal Entomological Research notes that by the 1930s and 1940s, beekeeping stations had been established in a handful of locations – including Coimbatore, Pusa, and Nagrota – but these operated in isolation, with no coordinated national framework. A Bee Research Centre did come up at Mahabaleshwar in 1952, which later evolved into the Apiculture Research Laboratory. Work done there on bee flora, palynology, and honey analysis provided the scientific bedrock that would eventually convince KVIC to invest in a larger, more permanent institution.

KVIC and the birth of CBRTI, Pune 🔗

The most pivotal institutional development in Indian beekeeping came on 1st November 1962, when KVIC, in collaboration with the Maharashtra State Khadi and Village Industries Board, formally established the Central Bee Research and Training Institute (CBRTI) in Pune. According to the Complete Book on Beekeeping and Honey Processing, the CBRTI in turn established Regional Bee Research Laboratories, field observation stations, and experimental apiaries across the country, undertaking field-oriented research across departments including bee botany, bee management, bee breeding, bee pathology, and pollination.

The institute did not appear out of nowhere. The successful research output of the Mahabaleshwar Apiculture Research Laboratory had drawn KVIC’s attention, and that lab had already been recognized as an All India Training Centre for beekeeping. But the scope of that lab was limited to the Mahabaleshwar plateau and the surrounding valleys of the Western Ghats. CBRTI was designed to take bee research to the entire country – a national mandate, not a regional one.

What CBRTI actually does 🔗

As described by KVIC, the Commission operates a full-fledged Directorate of Forest Based Industry alongside CBRTI, which together work to standardize beekeeping practices across different agro-climatic conditions in India. The institute runs departments covering apiculture, bee pathology, bee chemistry, bee botany, bee museum, entomology, and pollination research. Over time, as the National Bee Board notes, CBRTI evolved into a hub where even the National Commission on Agriculture (NCA) came seeking guidance – and the NCA’s 1976 report recommended that CBRTI be developed as the primary national centre for honey and honeybee research and training, placed at par with other central ICAR institutes.

Beyond research, CBRTI plays a crucial role in training extension workers, agricultural officers, and NGO personnel who then carry modern beekeeping knowledge to rural India. This multiplier effect – training the trainers – has been central to spreading scientific apiculture at scale.

The Nagrota-Bagwan bee research station 🔗

While CBRTI anchored beekeeping research in western India, the station at Nagrota-Bagwan in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh held a different but equally important place in India’s apiculture history. The station was originally established in 1936 under the Department of Agriculture, Government of Punjab, and eventually came under the CSK Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University in Palampur. It is best known for a landmark achievement: the successful introduction of Apis mellifera – the European honeybee – into India in 1964.

This was no small feat. Multiple attempts to import Apis mellifera between 1930 and 1953 had failed. It was Dr. A.S. Atwal and his team at Nagrota-Bagwan who cracked it, using an inter-specific queen introduction technique. Apis mellifera produces five to ten times more honey than the native Apis cerana and is less prone to absconding. Once established at this station, colonies were multiplied and distributed to agencies across the country. By the 1970s, migratory beekeeping using Apis mellifera had begun spreading through the Punjab plains, and today Himachal Pradesh alone maintains over 84,000 colonies of this species, producing hundreds of metric tonnes of honey annually.

From research station to heritage farm 🔗

The historical significance of Nagrota-Bagwan has not gone unrecognized. The Tribune reported that CSK HP Agriculture University has submitted a Rs. 6.20 crore project to ICAR to convert the station into a Bee Heritage Farm, equipping it with modern research and teaching facilities. The station’s contributions – introducing migratory beekeeping in 1983, supplying colonies even to Bhutan in 1986, and building expertise in the northwest Himalayan belt – make it more than a research facility. It is a milestone in Indian agricultural history.

Coimbatore and the expansion of beekeeping research in South India 🔗

Beekeeping research in southern India has its own deep roots. Historical records show that beekeeping stations were established at Coimbatore as far back as the 1930s and 1940s, making it one of the earliest centres of organized apiculture research on the subcontinent. The development of modern, frame-based beekeeping in south India had actually begun even earlier – in 1910, when Rev. Father Newton designed a smaller movable-frame hive specifically suited to Apis cerana in the southern region. This innovation marked one of the first efforts to bring structure and science to beekeeping practice in India.

Coimbatore’s infrastructure, research culture, and favourable climate made it a natural home for beekeeping research, and successive institutional investments – including ICAR’s expanding network – ensured it remained relevant to the national apiculture agenda.

ICAR’s coordinated research project: connecting the dots 🔗

Even with CBRTI and the regional stations functioning, beekeeping research in India remained somewhat fragmented through the 1960s and 1970s. The missing piece was a mechanism for nationally coordinated research. That changed when ICAR launched the All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Honeybee Research and Training in 1980-81, following a recommendation from the National Commission on Agriculture in 1976.

The project started with its coordinating unit based at CBRTI, Pune, with six participating centres across the country. Five more centres were added in 1983, covering State Agricultural Universities in locations including Solan, Ludhiana, Jorhat, Pusa, Vellayani, Hisar, Pantnagar, and Bhubaneswar. With eight collaborating centres initially, the initiative aimed to strengthen honeybee research, promote modern beekeeping techniques, and enhance pollination services to support agricultural productivity.

Evolution of the AICRP into a nationwide network 🔗

The AICRP was not static. The project’s coordinating unit shifted from CBRTI Pune to CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar in 1987-88, and then moved again to ICAR-IARI, Pusa, New Delhi in 2013 for more efficient administration. The project also changed its name: during the 11th Plan period (2007), it was expanded and renamed the All India Coordinated Research Project on Honey Bees and Pollinators, reflecting growing awareness of pollination’s role in food security beyond just honey production. Today, the project operates with 18 regular coordinating centres and 6 voluntary centres spread across agro-ecological zones of the country.

One of the project’s major contributions was helping spread Apis mellifera to diverse parts of India. At Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University in Bihar, for instance, AICRP introduced Apis mellifera colonies in 1987-88, which adapted well to local agro-climatic conditions – opening new opportunities in a state already known for its prized litchi honey.

The policy layer: National Bee Board 🔗

Research institutions need policy backing to function at national scale, and that backing came formally with the establishment of the National Bee Board (NBB) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. The NBB works at the level of policy formulation and coordination – bringing together government agencies, ICAR, KVIC, and industry stakeholders. Its managing committee includes representatives from APEDA, ICAR, KVIC, and elected members from beekeeping societies and individual beekeepers, reflecting the sector’s diversity. The NBB bridges the gap between ground-level beekeeping and national agricultural policy, ensuring that research findings from institutions like CBRTI and the AICRP centres translate into actionable programmes for beekeepers.

The impact: from scattered practice to a structured industry 🔗

The institutional investments made through KVIC and ICAR have had measurable outcomes. India now produces over 1,33,200 metric tonnes of honey annually, and the sector supports direct and indirect livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of rural households. KVIC’s Honey Mission alone distributed more than 1,86,000 bee boxes since its inception in 2017-18, creating over 18,600 direct employment opportunities and contributing to a reported 25-40% increase in agricultural yields through improved pollination.

None of this would have been possible without the systematic foundation laid by CBRTI in Pune, the pioneering species-introduction work at Nagrota-Bagwan, the early research heritage of Coimbatore, and the coordination architecture of ICAR’s AICRP. Each institution addressed a specific gap – training, species diversity, regional adaptation, and coordinated research – and together, they built a national beekeeping ecosystem from the ground up.

What do you think? India’s beekeeping institutions were built through deliberate policy choices in the decades following independence – do you think the same level of institutional investment is being made today for other underutilized agricultural sectors? And with climate change threatening bee populations worldwide, how should India’s research institutions like CBRTI and the AICRP network evolve to address this new challenge?

References

1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1748-5967.70069
2. https://www.niir.org/books/book/isbn-TheCompleteBookonBeekeepingandHoneyProcessing(2ndRevisedEdition)/zb,,136,a,0,0,a/index.html
3. https://www.kvic.gov.in/newhm/hmkviccourses.html
4. https://nbb.gov.in/aboutus.htm
5. https://thenewshimachal.com/2021/09/historical-bee-research-station-of-agri-varsity-to-be-upgraded-to-bee-heritage-farm/
6. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/himachal/bee-research-centre-to-be-bee-heritage-farm-310640
7. https://aicrp.icar.gov.in/honeybee/about-us/
8. https://aau.ac.in/department/department_details/245
9. https://aicrp.icar.gov.in/honeybee/pc-massage/
10. https://rpcau.ac.in/beekeeping/
11. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1925904