This woman from Mancherial is a busy bee!

Kavita Datla, who is into apiculture, earns Rs 50,000 a month producing around 40 kg of honey

Mancherial: Kavita Datla from Bellampalli is one of those women who have found a way to prove their mettle and follow their passion at the same time. She is excelling in the unconventional field of apiculture, after becoming the first woman to enter the field in the district.

“I founded a voluntary organisation called Samrudhi Society in 2020 with the objective to help women and adolescent girl dropouts achieve empowerment and to advocate sustainable agriculture. I stumbled upon the diversification of crops which was practiced till the 1980s but vanished over a period of time. I researched different ways to spread the cause. I zeroed in on keeping bees,” Kavita told ‘Telangana Today.’

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Kavita ventured into beekeeping by investing Rs 10 lakh from her savings in March 2022. She is now successfully producing between 30 and 40 kilograms of honey by keeping honeybee boxes around agriculture fields and forests in different parts of Mancherial and Kumram Bheem Asifabad districts every month. She is earning between Rs 40,000 and Rs 50,000 per month. She also helps farmers in the diversification of crops by renting the boxes at a nominal price. “As honeybees play a vital role in pollination which results in increasing yield of crops, farmers are now evincing interest to hire the bee boxes. A section of farmers grow paddy, cotton, and maize crops are raising lentils, millets, and oil seeds with the help of bees,” she said.

She was renting bee boxes to three farmers on a regular basis and to three others temporarily at the time of gathering honey from the boxes. Staffers of the society were trained by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission and the National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), in keeping bees and procuring the honey, she said. The sociology post-graduate revealed that students and teachers of both government and private educational institutions were expressing interest in learning apiculture by visiting her honeybee-keeping sites. She had worked as the centre administrator of Sakhi Centre of Mancherial before setting up the voluntary organisation.