From sink to source: the honey bee network documents indigenous knowledge and innovations in India

Abstract

India has a natural wealth of biodiversity, thanks to variations in its climates and soil conditions and its geographical features, including rain forests, arid lands, and mountains. Yet many of India’s most biologically rich regions are prone to drought and floods or distant from the amenities of urban life. Many in these regions live in poverty and relative isolation: their local products are unfamiliar in most of the world, their public infrastructures are weak, and their skills are unrecognized. Subsistence in these regions is a constant challenge. Local individuals and tribal communities have long met those challenges by drawing on their local environments, inventing effective agricultural techniques, and learning the medicinal and nutritional value of nearby plants. Harsh conditions have done as much to induce individual creativity and innovation as to limit them.