Our Correspondent
Kohima | January 13
In the mid 1970s, during his youth, KP Sangte along with a friend came across a cerana colony inside a big log tress which they harvested and sold a bottle of the honey to a defence personnel from Assam Rifles stationed near their village.
In 1979, he found an old termite nest and improvised it into an underground bee house. Same principle was applied to prepare burrows under big stone boulders and tree trunks and this way he started traditional bee keeping from 1981 onwards.
It was only in 2009 that a band of 15 enthusiastic beekeepers from his village led by him attended a cluster programme on Scientific Beekeeping at neighbouring Changlangshu village conducted by NBHM.
With his beekeeping experience of more than 25 years by then, it was just a matter of putting in place few other pieces of information to sojourn on the sweets journey ahead.
With good initiative from his end and overall hard work by the Committee members, they availed the first CFC under Mon district in 2012 and today it stands proudly as an office place, museum and also serves as a mini honey collection and packaging unit.
Sangte was the recipient of District Level Award for Best Beekeeper 2019 during 2nd Nagaland Honey Bee Day held at Kohima recently under the aegis of Nagaland Beekeeping & Honey Mission (NBHM) with support from North East Council (NEC).
Sangte hails from Monyakshu village under Mon district.
Presently, Sangte has 64 Apis cerana colonies. Yield per annum stands 250-320 kgs.
As per his experience, to become a successful beekeeper, one has to check the colonies every now and then and keep them neat and clean.
