Dr.Anita Mohandas, who is the Founder and Managing Trustee of the Global Scientific Research Foundation, gave a very interesting and informative talk at CMR PU ITPL, on Beekeeping and the important role that bees play in the Conservation of Bio-diversity, on August 2019.
She dedicated herself in the research of insects like Honeybees, for which she was given a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ by the Ministry of Bhutan, after 25 years of research! Students were awestruck at the facts about how important bees are in everyone’s life.
Honeybee belongs to ‘Hymenoptera’ family of insects and ‘Apis’ genus. They are one of the most hard-working insects, which help in an important process in plants, called ‘Pollination’. We are dependent on bees, like how every organism is interdependent in the food chain. In fact, one-third of our global food supply is pollinated by bees!
Bees keep plants and crops alive. They pollinate $15 billion worth of crops each year, including more than 130 fruits and vegetables. Without Honeybees, humans wouldn’t have very much to eat. Honeybees not only supply us with honey, but also with other products such as Bee Wax, Bee Pollen, Royal Jelly and Bee Venom.
A Bee colony, which consists of 40,000 to 50,000 bees, pollinate about 300 MILLION flowers!
We were amazed to see the complex structure of such a small insect.
Dr. Anita explained to us about the interesting life cycle of a bee. She also explained how hard-working bees are. She further explained to us how Honey is produced and, also about its importance and the diseases it cures/prevents. Then, we learned about Beekeeping. We were explained about its history, and how beekeeping provides employment and income to many.
We were enlightened about how bees teach life lessons, such as:
- Coordination and unity in labour; All the bees are united and each one does its own work, without a break.
- Doing a lot of hard work leads to success.
- How optimization plays an important role; Bees are incredible civil engineers! They construct a hive in such a way that it is used most effectively to produce honey.
- How they cooperate and serve selflessly.
All of us, students, had a great experience listening to this talk and realized how Honey Bees are important for the world, immaterial of their size. It’s not just honeybees, but each and every organism living on earth are very important, and we must make sure that none of them goes extinct.
We were grateful for the opportunity to attend this talk.
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.”- Albert Einstein.
- Mohammed Amaan.T (1’A’)
