The National Bee Board (NBB), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India (GOI), has sanctioned two new projects in apiculture for the department of entomology, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), under the National Beekeeping and Honey Mission (NBHM) scheme.
Head of the department Dr DK Sharma and in-charge of the apiculture unit Dr Pardeep Kumar Chhuneja stated that the new projects include facilitating honey bee health through diagnosing and managing various diseases of Italian honey bees’ and ‘development of quality queen bees of Apis mellifera.’
Dr Sharma disclosed that earlier too, PAU was sanctioned two projects in succession by NBB, the previous being on Queen bee rearing and supplies, followed by a mega project of Integrated beekeeping development centre in 2016-17, which had bee-disease diagnosis and bee-breeding as the components. Dr Amit Choudhary and Dr Bharathi Mohindru are the principal investigators of the projects. They stated that the projects will help in building necessary infrastructure and developing technologies in areas of bee-pathology and bee-breeding.