Other bee products are bee pollen/bread or ambrosia consisting of flower pollen gathered by worker bees as a primary food source for their hives (mistakenly used as a vegetarian protein diet), bee venom (used in medicines and as beauty treatment), beeswax/mom (used in a wide variety of applications covering cream & lotion cosmetics, lipsticks, foods, pharmaceuticals, paints, candles, polishes, lubricants, as well as for arts and crafts), propolis (a resinous, anti-fungal and anti-bacterial mixture similar to beeswax that bees collect from botanical sources for sealing small gaps in their hives), bee larvae (eaten: e.g. by Nagas – huge quantities are sold in the weekly bazaar at Dimapur), bee larva powder and royal jelly (used as a food supplement/tonic and in cosmetics). Beeswax/mom is commonly referred to as white wax/bleached wax or yellow wax and is obtained by steeping honeycombs in boiling water.

The European Food Safety Authority and the US Food & Drug Administration have taken action against companies that have claimed health benefits to market royal jelly products. It is the secretion from the glands of nurse bees and is the food of all the colony bees. However, when the hive is producing new queens the worker bees construct special queen cells and the larvae in these cells are fed copious amounts of royal jelly that triggers the development of queens with fully developed ovaries needed to lay eggs. Royal jelly is stolen from colonies when the queen larvae are about four days old.

Like in the case of royal jelly, there is no evidence to prove that propolis is a natural healing agent. It is bee glue and is used by the bees as a sealant to fill open spaces in their hives.

The GI (geographical indication status) was awarded to Bastar in Chhattisgarh for dhokra/dokra artefacts. It is non-ferrous metal casting using the lost-wax casting technique that utilises pure bees wax. Also at Swamimalai, a small village near Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, the sculptors and artisans of bronze idols received a GI tag for their ancient art of lost-wax technique of bronze-idol casting using soft dough of bees wax and gum resin.

Incidentally paper straws could be coated with beeswax to maintain their shape.

Some liqueurs can contain beeswax which could be overlooked as an ingredient. In May 2016, Baileys came out with their new dairy- and gluten-free almond milk-based liqueur called Almande. The media covered it extensively while vegans were overjoyed to have an alternative to the traditional Irish cream. It was then revealed that Baileys had not intended to create a vegan beverage! So upon checking they discovered that Almande was unfortunately not vegan since it contained beeswax. The company then declared that they would try to remove the animal product from the formulation by March 2017. By May 2017 new bottles marketed in North America began carrying the vegan label.

The latest in the myriad uses of honey (as medicinal, food and beauty products) is that it has been introduced as a preservative for mangos. Kept immersed in a jar of honey it is claimed that they become sweeter although they shrink due to loss of moisture.

Given the background, it is incorrect to feel that no cruelty is involved in obtaining honey and other bee products. Honey is the bees’ food and we steal it from their hives/homes by pulling out dripping honey comb frames and replacing them with empty ones. They do not make it for human consumption, but for their own sustenance, therefore it can not be considered or marked vegetarian. Similarly, other bee products like beeswax/mom and bee larvae, snatched from bee hives are not meant for human consumption.

A New Zealand based company Humble Bee Bio is working to create by June 2023 a biodegradable plastic alternative by studying the Australian masked bee and using its genetic blueprint to develop a sustainable lab material. This bee specie doesn’t make honey, but it does make a nesting material for laying larvae which has many plastic-like properties: is resistant to acids and bases, is hydrophobic, waterproof, flame retardant and stable up to 240°C.

Substitutes for Beeswax

Petroleum derived Paraffin, Ozokerite/Earth, Ceresin & Montan waxes, are also utilised as substitutes for beeswax but are not always non-animal in origin. Animal bones are burnt at high temperatures (shale and fossils could also be used) to obtain charcoal used in refining crude oil for the production of Paraffin wax, etc. Ceresin is particularly used in ointments. In fact these waxes are also widely used in cosmetics and personal care products. Paraffin wax is a petroleum jelly and a by-product of petrol; whereas Vaseline is a mixture of petroleum jelly and mineral oil. (In short, paraffin can vary with a number of different hydrocarbons compounds with carbon atoms between 15 and 40. They exhibit a range of chemical properties, some are solid at room temperature like candle wax, others are light oils used in cosmetics. Kerosene and jet fuel are also paraffin derived and diesel oil contains paraffin.)

Unfortunately manufacturers do not readily utilise the good vegan plant derived substitutes for beeswax for candles to cosmetics that are available:

Carnauba wax: also known as Ceara wax and Brazil wax, is obtained from the fronds of the carnauba palm. It is valued for its hardness and high melting temperature, is used in vegan foods as a gelling agent. Moreover, it is still used in place of beeswax certain furniture, leather, car & shoe polishes, cosmetics & lipsticks, as polish for candies & medicinal pills, thickener for solvents & hardener for printing inks.

Candelilla wax: CW (as it is commonly called) is obtained from the leaves of a small shrub native to Northern Mexico and South Western United States. Globally recognised as a food additive it is a glazing agent in binder for chewing gums. Also used in lip balms & lotions, and in the paint industry for varnishes making it a replacement for beeswax.

Soy wax: is made by the full hydrogenation of soybean oil. It is mainly used for making candles.

Bayberry wax: is obtained from the fruit of the bayberry or wax-myrtle shrub. It is used for scented candles and other products where its distinctive resinous fragrance is desirable.

Beekeepers are reporting a new phenomenon, that on going to their hives they are finding no bees! More and more bee colonies are mysteriously vanishing in what is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Their disappearance is positively alarming because bees are responsible for pollination in every thing that grows from crops to vegetables to fruits (i.e. agriculture, horticulture and forestry). America was one of the first countries to begin renting hives out for pollination purposes and they earn more this way than by selling honey and bee products. Moving bee hives great distances and frequently could in itself be one of the reasons of dire stress to bees leading to CCD. Other possible reasons are that bees are finding it increasingly difficult to adapt to genetically modified plants and the use of bee-toxic neonic pesticides, in addition to which radiation signals from mobile phones and towers make them disoriented; they are also harmed due to air pollution and global warming. Varroa mites (parasite that feeds on the blood of bees) is one of the other perils that face honeybee populations worldwide.

Lack of bees and therefore pollination is increasingly affecting farmers in India too. For example pomegranate farmers of Maharashtra have had to resort to renting beehive boxes. It seems the demand is fast increasing and can not be met by the suppliers.

Although strict regulations do exist in other countries like Russia, China and New Zealand, electromagnetic radiation (EMR) does not figure in India’s notified list of pollutants. However, it has been proved that birds and bees in particular, suffer the ill-effects. BWC wrote to the Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology drawing his attention to the fact that all life gets adversely affected by radiation from mobile/cell phone towers. We also suggested that the government should quickly locate appropriate neutralizing solutions and implement them because radiation was increasingly resulting in serious health problems for humans and animals. Furthermore, a request was made that no towers should be allowed to exist in wild life areas. Bees and also birds were cited: independent studies undertaken had proved beyond doubt that their populations had drastically fallen due to radiation from mobile towers.

A study concluded that subsequent to a mobile phone with a frequency of 900 MHz, being kept daily for 10 minutes in beehives, after 10 days worker bees stopped coming to the hives and the queens laid 100 instead of 350 eggs per day. (Another study showed that sparrows exposed to EMR suffered from reproductive and co-ordination problems and became aggressive.)

Earlier, the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests constituted an expert committee for studying the impact of towers and mobile phones on bees and birds in 2010. One of the experiments in Kerala found that thriving hives suddenly left with only queens, eggs and hive bound immature worker bees. Thus, EMR exposure provides a stronger explanation for CCD than other theories.

After recommending lowering the permissible EMR level which was not implemented for a year, in 2012 based on the committee’s findings, a precautionary advisory was issued by the Ministry which among several measures to curtail radiation, particularly if affecting wildlife like birds and bees, stated that no new tower should be erected within a radius of 1 km of existing ones. Moreover the forest department should be consulted before installation of towers in and around protected areas and zoos.

Recognising and acknowledging the harmful and malignant effects of radiation on humans the Union Ministry for Communications amended the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, to implement new mobile radiation norms on 1 September 2012: radio frequency exposure limits lowered to one-tenth, and mobile handsets sold require special absorption compliance limits, i.e. lower SAR.

A 2011 study in Tamil Nadu observed that bees were not visiting flowers but were strangely attracted by the residual sugar in disposed paper cups outside coffee and juice shops. Falling into these cups thrown in garbage bins, an unimaginable high number of bees die (one bee per cup at least) because they are unable to then fly away and survive. Furthermore, others get killed in recycling units.

A number of India’s bee scientists feel that there is a decline in population in the country mainly due to use of pesticides and deforestation – and some say even due to urbanization and unchecked tourism. Interestingly, in Israel, pesticides are sprayed in the evening after the bees have settled in their hives, whereas in India they are sprayed in the morning and therefore affect the bees.

The Union Ministry of Agriculture has through the National Horticulture Mission’s programme offered the missing pollination support through commercial beekeeping. But, in Mahableshwar (hill station of Maharashtra) beekeeping has almost come to a standstill. One of the reasons being the phenomenal area under strawberry cultivation from Panchgani to Mahableshwar where massive sprays control the strawberry mite and this results in the elimination of bees. There might well be different kinds of sprays for different crops in different places, killing not just bees but numerous kinds of insects, even those that are not labelled as injurious to crops.

The scientist who came out with a bee calendar in 2019 declared that the hybrid sunflowers cultivated in Punjab now have poor nectar secretion ability and no longer attract bees like they did few years ago. Similarly there was no flowering observed in cloned variants of eucalyptus trees from which farmers were now extracting oil and pulp meant for the paper industry.

In short, all man-made environmental calamities which are fast resulting in doom for the bees, in turn could very well spell doom for us, humans. Albert Einstein is attributed to have said “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination… no more men!” The fact in 2019 was that one-in-six species of bees had already gone regionally extinct somewhere in the world. In 1923 scientist Rudolf Steiner predicted that within 100 years the artificial cultivation of honey bees would have severe consequences on the bee population.

Quite right because at the British Ecological Society meeting in 2010, it was stated that globally pollination is estimated to be worth £141bn or $224bn each year; and annually India (second to China) produces about 7.5 million tonnes of vegetables accounting for about 14% of the global total. However, a study presented by the University of Calcutta’s Ecology Research Unit found a decline in pollinating insects in India which was resulting in reduced vegetable yield and could limit people’s access to a nutritional diet. Vegetables such as pumpkin, squash, cucumber and gherkin relied on insects, such as bees, whereas certain crops, including cereals, did not depend on insects for pollination, since the plants used other mechanism such as relying on the wind to carry the pollen. The Food & Agriculture Organisation therefore established an International Pollinators Initiative (India is one of the seven nations of this group) with the aim of identifying practices and building capacity in the management of pollination services. In Maoxian County, Sichuan, China the decline of pollinators has forced some apple (fruit) farmers to pollinate by hand.

Furthermore, the United Nations report of March 2011 reiterated that bees pollinate 70 crops of the 100 that provide 90% of the world’s food. It is therefore vital that a decline in the number of bees should not be allowed to continue. Humans should immediately stop the use of insecticides which affect bees and not pollute the air.

Another important point for India is that imported bees such as the European Apis mellifera pollinate very few Indian plants and therefore need to be fed sugar and antibiotics to adjust to climatic conditions. In comparison, in fields where the Indian bees Apis cerana indica are found (and no insecticides used) crops flourish.

A couple of months earlier an emergency petition was launched by Avaaz (the international famous petition site) which was supported by Beauty Without Cruelty also. It said that “Bees are dying off worldwide and our entire food chain is in peril. Scientists blame toxic pesticides and four European governments have already banned them. If we get the US and EU to join the ban (on neonicotinoid pesticides), other governments across the world could follow, and save bees from extinction. Bees are vital to life on earth – every year pollinating 75% growing plants and crops with an estimated $40bn value, over one third of the food supply in many countries. Without immediate action to save bees we could end up with no fruit, no vegetable, no nuts, no oils and no cotton.” The mega campaign resulted in the EU banning a group of poisons in 2013. In the wake of a decision to be taken by the US in September 2014 Avaaz launched another signature campaign to counteract the US chemical companies’ lobbying.

Monsanto’s GM crops containing pesticides kill honey bees. Therefore in 2011, the company purchased the world’s largest bee research firm called Beeologics. They felt the solution will be achieved by producing GM bees! Little wonder that Monsanto has been rated as the worst for its ongoing work to threaten human health and the environment.

In February 2016, the first global assessment of the threat to creatures, including some 20,000 species of wild bees that pollinate the world’s plants was released in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a group affiliated with the United Nations. The report said farming exposed these insects to pesticides, and bees were under attack from parasites and pathogens as well. Chemicals such as neonicotinoids were to blame, and even if pesticides levels were not lethal on individual insects, concentrations in the hives had long-term effects on bee colonies.

Mosquito elimination pesticides also affect bee populations. And, odour from garbage is one of the biggest threats to their survival since it affects their foraging behaviour and has even known to result in starvation.

Interestingly bee eater birds that migrate from the Himalayas during winter have been increasingly consuming bees in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. (They have also attacked rubber plantations along Sinhudurg, Ratnagiri and Swantwadi.)

The Bee Keeping & Training Institute, Mahableshwar, declared that only 25% of natural bees had returned to their colonies in 2019. CCD had resulted due to a prolonged, heavy monsoon and excessive use of pesticides which killed the bees.

In 2023 it was reported that more than 1,500 villagers across 113 villages in the Warli tribal belt in Maharashtra’s Palghar district had been introduced to beekeeping in order improve pollination in the region and consequently crop yields. Unfortunately they were also being taught to consume and sell honey. 

In January 2024, the All India Coordinated Research Project on Honey Bees and Pollinators (AICRP) and ICAR’s Indian Agricultural Research Institute were concerned about erratic weather conditions causing a significant mortality in honey bees in parts of North India and to some extent in Maharashtra.

In August 2024 beekeepers of France declared that their bees were starving to death. They were feeding colonies sugar but did not stop taking 20 to 30% of the honey available. Their beehives typically produce 15 kgs of honey annually, but this year only 5 to 7 kgs was produced. In June 2024 instead of the bee population increasing, bees were unable to collect pollen and since nothing came in they died of hunger. Temperatures had stagnated below 18 degrees Celsius (the minimum needed for flowers to produce nectar) plus there was heavy rainfall which prevented the bees from going out from their hives.

Plan Bee

In November 2023, soon after yet another elephant moving with a herd was mowed down by a passenger train in northern Assam’s Biswanath town by the Guwahati bound Donyi Polo Express coming from Naharlagun in Arunachal Pradesh, the Railways declared that they would deploy a AI-based intrusion detection system called ‘Gajraj’ on 700 kms to curb jumbo deaths across states in the next 7-8 months to prevent accidents with elephants – 200 elephants had been killed by trains in the last 10 years. A pilot project over a section of 60-70 kms had been undertaken by the Northeast Frontier Railway.