Women keep native bees alive in Indian homes
Local women in a mountainous part of India share their traditional homes with native honey bees to ensure their survival.
Traditional houses feature special wall cavities that provide safe dark spaces for the bees to build their nests securely inside the structure walls. Builders create rectangular openings sealed with clay and cow dung to protect the colony from harsh weather conditions and dangerous predators like ants.
Women in these households traditionally manage the bees while men often seek jobs in distant cities away from rural village life and farming duties. Kamla Devi has cared for her bees for twenty-one years. She says the insects have lived there since her daughter was born as a child.
Experts state that these women are the only reason the Indian honey bee species continues to survive in this specific mountainous region. Modern cement houses lack these special wall hives, reducing available nesting options significantly for the native insects that need dark cavities to stay safe.
The traditional wall hives are especially important because they offer critical protection against habitat loss and invasive species threatening the local bee populations. Without these human-made shelters, the bees would struggle to find safe places to live and raise their young families in the wild.
“The only reason A. cerana indica [Indian honey bees] are still surviving in Uttarakhand is the women.”