Bee Conservation and Conversations

Useful for sustainable agriculture and upholding ecosystem services, bees bear important links to biodiversity and human well being. Among them, companies have a key role to play. Widespread use of pesticides and fertilizer, habitat destruction, and climate change threaten the future of bees and other pollinators and insects.

Therefore, pollinator-friendly actions from government policy down to individual action is important. For the first time among businesses, Dilmah Tea’s Bee A Keeper Project, initiated in 2020, aims to conserve Sri Lankan honeybee population through research, education, community involvement and economic upliftment while researching innovating tools such as payment for ecosystems in corporate environmental projects, Dilmah Conservation that has launched a bee keeping project said in a news release.

“Aiming to increase the biodiversity in the tea gardens and bolster biodiversity research, Bee A Keeper Program falls under the conservation and sustainability arm of Dilmah Tea that has several centres in Sri Lanka committed to creating a better tea for people and planet.

“Bee A Keeper, having several trajectories such as bee research and community beekeeping are each carried out at a designated centre. At the Climate Change Centre in Nawalapitiya, dedicated for climate research, the focus is on bee research. Endana Centre whose flagship project is building a nature corridor, adopts community sustainable beekeeping to involve the community in conserving their home gardens and the neighbouring forest.

“The cumulative ecological wealth of the Endana Nature Corridor is at USD 382,362. Both Endana and the Nawalapitiya centres conduct beekeeping training workshops,” the release said.

It explained that at least 30% of global crops depend on bees for pollination. Without them our favourite food would be lost to us. Due to widespread use of pesticides and fertilizer, habitat destruction, and climate change the future of bees and other pollinators and insects is threatened.

Education and awareness are important for the success of conserving bees. Dr Anura Indrajith Sirisena Entomologist at the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka and chief advisor for the Bee a Keeper project said, “in community beekeeping we are interested in getting the involvement of the farmers. Through this they come to realize the importance of bees and why we need to conserve them. Further they learn sustainable techniques needed to conserve bees”

During the pandemic (2021), Dr Sirisena curated and delivered a webinar series “Friendly Beekeeper” organized by Dilmah Conservation to introduce beekeeping. With over 300 participants registering, the series was a success. The recorded sessions of Friendly Beekeeper are found on the Dilmah Tea YouTube channel.

Among the research focus of the program some of the interest areas have been monitoring bee decline, addressing the lack of taxonomic information on bees, assessing the economic value and impact apiculture, evaluating the status of wild bee populations, and studying the chemistry of honey variants.

In future, the program hopes to increase its volume of training programs for locals in the area and for the hospitality sector that can benefit from apitourism. An extension of ecotourism, apitourism ranges from site tours, tasting experiences to safely engaging in beekeeping. It is one of the aims of the project to make sustainable beekeeping popular in Sri Lankan ecotourism niche thereby indirectly strengthening sustainable beekeeping.

Dilmah was founded on the knowledge of its enduring connection to the land and the surrounding communities in which it operates. Dilmah Conservation is a symbol of Dilmah’s comprehensive commitment to minimizing its impact on the planet, to fostering respect for the environment and ensuring its protection by encouraging a harmonious co-existence of man and nature and the sustainable use of the environment.