ICAR-NBAIR, Bengaluru organizes training on meliponiculture for ITBP

Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], June 25 : A five-day training on Meliponiculture (Stingless bees) was inaugurated at the ICAR-National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources (NBAIR), Bengaluru on Tuesday where the event was attended by twenty Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel.
Dr S.N. Sushil, Director, ICAR-NBAIR Bengaluru, chaired the inaugural program and emphasized the significance of pollinators in agriculture, particularly meliponiculture for producing high-value medicinal honey. He encouraged the ITBP participants to promote the benefits of pollinators, said an official statement.

Meliponiculture, often known as stingless beekeeping, is the process of raising, caring for, and managing native stingless bees.
During the event, a training manual on "Meliponiculture" was released to benefit the participants.

Ramesh Chand, Team Lead from ITBP, lauded the expected benefits from the training. The training will cover both theoretical and practical aspects of meliponiculture, including the biology and behaviour of stingless bees, value addition, and marketing of honey.
Dr K. Subaharan, Principal Scientist and Head of the Division of Germplasm Conservation and Utilization, along with subject experts Drs. A.N. Shylesha and T.M. Shivalingaswamy participated in the program, added the official release.

The training was coordinated by Dr Amala Udayakumar, Senior Scientist (Entomology), and Dr T. Prabhulinga, Scientist (Entomology). This course is being facilitated by Sanjeev Raina, IG Central Frontier Headquarters, ITBP.