INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS ISSN(print): 2643-9840, ISSN(online): 2643-9875 Volume 05 Issue 02 February 2022 DOI: 10.47191/ijmra/v5-i2-05, Impact Factor: 6.072 Page No.- 279-283 IJMRA, Volume 5 Issue 02 February 2022 www.ijmra.in Page 279 Adoption of Recommended Beekeeping Practices in Kumaon Hills of Uttarakhand Dr. Kiran Rana 1 and 2 Ishita Mishra 1 Asst. Prof, Department of Agricultural Communication, GBPUA&T, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand 2 M.Sc. Student, Department of Agricultural Communication, GBPUA&T, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand ABSTRACT: Beekeeping in Uttarakhand is one of the oldest traditional practices followed both for the commercial purpose as well as the domestic use. It is an important supplementary income generating activity in the state. According to the experts, there is a need to adopt modern beekeeping practices by the traditional beekeepers in the state, especially in the areas like bee management, better extraction, honey storage and quality control. Honey bee farming is now a days becoming more popular due to its market demand in national as well as the international market. The farmers not only obtain economic benefits but beekeeping also helps the farmers increase the agricultural productivity through pollination. Uttarakhand has huge potential for beekeeping due to plenty of flora and suitability of climate but the farmers still depend on the traditional practices resulting in the low yield of honey produce both in terms of quality and quantity. Hence, there is a huge scope of adoption of advanced scientific practices in the state of Uttarakhand that can add to the farmers income in the state. ”Mountain farmers in Uttarakhand are facing extreme difficulties in meeting their basic needs because of meager opportunities to engage youth in respectable employment. The paper suggests that the Uttarakhand has tremendous scope for commercial beekeeping and use of bee for pollination of diversity agri-horticultural crops and wild flora. Also, the paper emphasizes on the constraints for beekeeping development and strategies for organic honey production in Mountain hill of Uttarakhand. INTRODUCTION Indian agriculture contributes for about 19.9 per cent of GDP and provides livelihood to about 52 per cent of the labour force. More than 50 per cent of the Indian population depends on agriculture and allied activities either directly, indirectly, primarily or secondarily for livelihood. The government of India in its annual budget 2016-2017 set a policy target of doubling the farmer’s income by 2022.To double the farmers income there should be an integration of various allied agricultural enterprise together with the crop production system. To double the farmers income, integrated farming system is a good approach which includes allied agriculture practices together with the crop production system. Few allied agricultural enterprises are mentioned as follows Dairy farming, Poultry, Piggery, Dairy, Bee keeping, Sericulture, Mushroom cultivation and Fisheries. An integration of these allied agriculture enterprise minimizes the risk factor associated with agriculture. One such most important allied agriculture practice in northern hills of India is apiculture, commonly referred as beekeeping. Bee keeping is defined as the scientific method of conservation and rearing of bees for the production of important hive products such as honey, bee-wax, royal jelly, propolis and bee-venom. It is an environmentally friendly and agro-forestry based occupation (Singh and Mishra, 1995). Beekeeping is an important enterprise that involves use of low input and high output sector. Honey is the most important primary product obtained from the beekeeping practices, both from quantitative and economic point of view, and it has been used by the mankind for many years as a source of food, medicine and for cultural ceremonies. Beekeeping has a vast potential for supplementary income generation for the farmers and rural, hilly and tribal populations. It is an excellent source of employment for the rural unemployed. Approximately 2,50,000 farmers in India got employment from beekeeping in the recent past years (Kejriwal, 2012). India ranks first in number of beehives stocks followed by China in the world and stands at eighth position in terms of World in honey production producing around 95,000 metric tons of honey per annum (NBB, 2016-17). There are several reasons behind this huge gap in availability of beehive stocks and total honey production, one may the partial or no adoption of the recommended beekeeping practice. Out of the total honey production in India, around 61 per cent is contributed by four states viz. West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Bihar.