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On the steep hill slopes of Assam’s Karbi Anglong, mornings once arrived with a constant hum. Honeybees drifted across mustard flowers, pumpkin vines, sesame blossoms and wild forest blooms that surrounded Jhum fields. In these mixed farms, where dozens of crops flowered at different times, bees moved continuously through the landscape, binding forests, farms and food systems together.
“In our Jhum fields, many crops flower across seasons, so bees always remain here,” said 63-year-old farmer Rajen Singnar from Dolamora village. “But now people are shifting to single cash crops and using chemicals. Slowly, the bees are disappearing from the hills.”
For generations, the Karbi community practiced Jhum cultivation, locally known as Inglong Arit Katiki, a traditional form of shifting cultivation deeply rooted in the ecological rhythms of the Northeast. The process involves clearing a patch of land and cultivating diverse crops together before allowing the land to regenerate naturally. Often criticised as primitive or destructive, Jhum is now emerging as one of the region’s most resilient agroecological systems, particularly for pollinators.
At Bijuli village in Karbi Anglong, 73-year-old farmer Longky Teron still cultivates traditional crops using indigenous farming knowledge passed down through generations.
“Honeybees are not merely honey producers,” he said. “They sustain pollination, forests and biodiversity. Their disappearance tells us something is becoming unbalanced in our hills.”
A single Jhum field generally contains 30 to 40 traditional crop varieties growing together, including paddy, maize, millets, sesame, pulses, pumpkins, yam, chilli, tapioca etc. Since these crops flower at different times, bees receive nectar and pollen throughout the year.
Unlike monoculture plantations that bloom briefly and then fall ecologically silent, Jhum landscapes provide continuous food sources for pollinators. Forest patches, bamboo groves and uncultivated vegetation surrounding the farms further strengthen habitats for wild bees and insects.
“For us, everything comes from these fields. Food, seeds, medicine and life,” said Teron. “That diversity is also what keeps bees alive.”
In many Indigenous communities across the Northeast, farming and forests are not separate systems. Communities traditionally protected wild vegetation, flowering trees and uncultivated spaces because they understood that bees were essential for crop fertility and ecological balance.
The Northeast region of India is home to several wild bee species, including the Giant Honeybee (Apis dorsata), Rock Bee (Apis laboriosa), Indian Honey Bee (Apis cerana indica), Dwarf Honey Bee (Apis florea), Stingless Bees (Tetragonula spp.), and various species of bumblebees (Bombus spp.)
Wild honey collection was once woven into everyday rural life. Communities closely observed flowering cycles, bee movement and forest behaviour. Today, much of that ecological knowledge is disappearing.
Across Northeast India, traditional mixed farming systems are increasingly being replaced by commercial monocropping and chemical-intensive agriculture.
“When I was young, bees were everywhere, even around household kitchen gardens,” recalled Singnar. “Now even these gardens are becoming silent.”
Large-scale cultivation of rubber, oil palm, tea, broom grass and hybrid horticulture crops is transforming biodiverse landscapes into uniform agricultural zones. These systems may generate short-term income, farmers say, but they drastically reduce biodiversity.
“For bees, monoculture landscapes become ecological deserts,” Singnar explained. “One crop flowers for only a few weeks. After that, there is nothing left.”
As mixed farming declines, so do wild plants and flowering weeds that once supported pollinators. Herbicides (Glyphosate, Paraquat dichloride, Glufosinate Ammonium, Oxyfluorfen) are removing uncultivated vegetation, while insecticides like Neonicotinoids sprayed during flowering seasons are directly harming bees.
Farmers across Assam and other northeastern states now report finding dead bees near sprayed fields. Forty-two-year-old farmer Bijit Kutum from Golaghat district has witnessed the change closely in Assam’s plains.
“Earlier, our home gardens had banana, papaya, pumpkin, medicinal plants and many local vegetables,” he said. “Now diversity is reducing everywhere.”
Kutum warned that chemical agriculture is disconnecting farming from ecology. “Our elders never sprayed chemicals during the flowering season,” he said. “They believed that if bees die, harvests will also die.”
At the same time, the Northeast is witnessing a growing push towards controlled-environment farming and polyhouses. While promoted as climate-smart agriculture, such systems often reduce dependence on natural pollinators altogether.
“Children now know packaged honey from markets,” Kutum said. “But they are forgetting wild honey, flowering seasons and local bee behaviour. That is also a loss of our culture.”
The disappearance of bees is not just about declining honey production.
“Many vegetables, fruits and forest species depend on pollination,” said Sethsala, a 55-year-old beekeeper from Amahator village in Nagaland’s Kiphire district. “We are already seeing reduced pollination in vegetable and fruit crops.”
Pollinators sustain forests by enabling flowering plants to reproduce. They support biodiversity by maintaining relationships between plants, insects, birds and animals. Healthy pollinator populations also strengthen climate resilience by supporting stable ecosystems.
In biodiversity-rich regions like Northeast India, their role becomes even more critical.
This ecological value is increasingly being recognised in policy discussions as well. The 2018 NITI Aayog report Shifting Cultivation: Towards a Transformational Approach acknowledged the ecological and cultural significance of shifting cultivation systems and recommended building upon Indigenous knowledge rather than replacing it.
Traditional farming calendars across the Northeast are closely aligned with flowering seasons, rainfall cycles and insect behaviour. In Amahator village, farmers continue to practise traditional beekeeping using hollow wooden log hives that mimic natural habitats. Fifty-eight-year-old farmer Thsathriba and younger beekeeper Yangtsase say their families have maintained bees this way for generations.
“In winter, honey is part of our food system,” said Yangtsase. “People here believe that bees are part of their life.”
To support such traditional farming systems, the Better Life Foundation is working with Jhum farmers in Amahator village under the JIVA programme. The initiative is financially supported by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), while Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN) provide technical support in collaboration with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) for implementation across the landscape.
The programme promotes diversified farming, indigenous seeds, ecological agriculture and pollinator-friendly practices rooted in local knowledge systems.
“This wisdom evolved through generations of co-existence with nature,” said Thsathriba. “But slowly, that knowledge is disappearing.”
Northeast India still contains some of the country’s richest agroecological landscapes, from Jhum systems and community forests to mixed farming and forest-based food cultures.
But these systems are increasingly under pressure from commercial agriculture, infrastructure expansion, shortening of the Jhum fallow period and development policies that often fail to recognise ecological value.
For farmers like Sethsala, protecting bees requires rethinking agriculture itself. “It means supporting diversified farming instead of monoculture,” she said. “It means reducing chemical dependency and recognising the ecological intelligence of Indigenous farming systems.”
Reviving local seeds, mixed crops, increasing jhum fallow period and traditional ecological knowledge are critical for restoring pollinator populations and building climate-resilient landscapes.
As World Bee Day draws attention to pollinator decline globally, the hills of Northeast India are offering a deeper warning.
Perhaps the real question, farmers say, is whether future generations will inherit landscapes alive with bees, forests and biodiversity or silent farms shaped by chemicals, monoculture and concrete.
“When bees disappear,” said Kutum, “ecosystems begin to lose their memory.”
Monuhar Pegu works as Regional Coordinator-Northeast India for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), Kaziranga, Assam
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth