Subscribe
On World Bee Day, Gopal Paliwal’s three-decade journey shows how wild bee conservation can be linked with forest-based livelihoods.
Working with tribal and forest-dwelling communities across central and eastern India, he has helped promote safer, non-destructive honey harvesting practices.
His work focuses on wild bee species such as Apis dorsata, whose role in pollination, farming and forest ecosystems remains under-recognised.
As habitat loss, pesticides and climate change threaten bee populations, Paliwal argues that conservation must combine science, community knowledge and sustainable markets.
The train had already begun pulling out of Wardha station when Gopal Paliwal settled into his seat, preparing for another journey — this time to the Konkan region for a training programme on honey collection and value-chain development. At 63, the life of the director of the Centre for Bee Development still moves to the rhythm of bees, forests and communities.
For more than three decades, he has travelled through tribal belts in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, working to protect wild honeybees while helping tribal and forest-dwelling communities build livelihoods around them.
“People think honey is the final product,” he said. “But honey is only a small visible part of a much larger ecological relationship.” The relationship between bees, forests, crops and people has shaped much of his life.
Paliwal grew up in Movad village in Maharashtra’s Nagpur district, where becoming a doctor was once his childhood dream. He tried twice to secure admission to an MBBS programme but did not succeed. The disappointment could have ended his academic ambitions. Instead, it redirected them.
He completed his BSc from Janakidevi Bajaj College and later earned an MSc from Nagpur University in 1987. Soon after, he joined a research project at the Gramopayogi Vigyan Kendra in Dattapur, Wardha, which would become a turning point that would define the rest of his life.
The project, funded by the Department of Science and Technology, explored how science could serve rural communities. Under the mentorship of Tarak Kate and Gandhian worker Amritrao Ghadge, Paliwal entered the world of wild honeybees.
“There are some teachers who give you knowledge,” he said. “And there are others who give you direction. I was fortunate to receive both.”
His doctoral research focused on Apis dorsata, the giant rock bee locally known as aagya moh. For five years, he studied its neurological and reproductive systems, often surviving on a stipend of just Rs 1,000 a month.
“The bees taught me patience,” he said. “You cannot rush their world.”
Across many forest regions, honey collection has long been physically risky and ecologically damaging. Collectors often smoke entire colonies, cut branches or fell trees to reach hives hanging high above the ground.
But Paliwal is careful not to reduce these practices to a simple story of “harmful tradition”.
“These communities inherited methods shaped by survival, not by malice,” he said. “The real question was whether science could support them with safer and more sustainable alternatives.” That question became the foundation of his work.
During an Oxfam fellowship between 1994 and 1997 in Gadchiroli’s Mendhalekha village, he began developing techniques and equipment that allowed honey to be harvested without destroying colonies. He designed protective gear, including specially stitched suits and helmets, enabling collectors to approach wild hives more safely.
The technology developed for honey collection came to be known as Sevagram Nisarg Technology of Wildbee Management.
He also introduced improved processing systems using stainless-steel drums and fine filtration methods to ensure cleaner honey with better market value.
Over time, his work expanded beyond collection. He began helping communities with bottling, branding, quality testing, packaging and marketing, building what he describes as “a complete ecosystem of dignity”.
“Conservation alone cannot survive,” he said. “People must also earn.”
He has also promoted the concept of a “low-cost honey house” for the post-harvest handling of raw honey for the market.
Listening to Paliwal speak about honey can feel less like a scientific lecture and more like a description of landscapes through flavour. Rock bees forage across forests rich with mahua, neem, karanj, amla and behada blossoms. The honey they produce changes subtly with each flowering cycle.
“When you taste wild honey carefully, you can taste the forest itself,” he said.
Unlike commercial honey, which is largely sourced from Apis mellifera, the European honeybee reared in box hives, wild forest honey emerges from migratory cycles closely tied to India’s ecology.
As the seasons shift, the bees travel from forests to farmlands and back again. They move through mustard fields, sunflower patches, pigeon pea farms and blooming palash forests, carrying pollen across wide landscapes. In doing so, they sustain far more than honey production.
For Paliwal, the conversation about bees cannot remain limited to honey.
“If bees disappear,” he said, “our food systems will begin collapsing silently.”
Pollination by wild bees supports the production of fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and other crops across India. Yet bee populations are declining, driven by habitat loss and the widespread use of herbicides and pesticides.
He points particularly to changes that accelerated after 2010.
“Earlier, farms were alive with pollinators,” he said. “Now many fields have become biologically silent.”
According to him, crop yields can decline significantly in the absence of bees, while pollination can increase productivity. He is especially concerned about the shrinking presence of Apis dorsata in agricultural landscapes. At the same time, he believes India’s scientific institutions have paid insufficient attention to several native bee species.
Most apiculture policies and research programmes focus largely on Apis cerana and Apis mellifera. Meanwhile, species such as Apis dorsata and Apis florea, both important to forest and farm ecosystems, remain under-researched.
“Every bee species has evolved with particular flowers and habitats,” he said. “If one disappears, entire ecological relationships weaken.”
Over 25 years, Paliwal estimates that more than 4,000 tribal honey collectors across 29 districts have been connected to sustainable honey livelihoods through his work.
These include Vaji Gond communities in Wardha, Halba communities in Yavatmal, Baiga groups in Madhya Pradesh, Korku communities in the Melghat region and Gond-Madiya communities in Gadchiroli.
Many collectors now earn higher incomes through organised honey enterprises. Communities associated with his initiatives reportedly harvest nearly 100 metric tonnes of honey a year, with an annual turnover of around Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 3 crore.
What stands out, however, is the mutual respect visible in his relationships with collectors. He speaks not as someone “uplifting” communities, but as someone who has learned from them.
“The forest teaches observation,” he said. “The people who live closest to it often understand its rhythms better than outsiders do.”
As evening falls, Paliwal reflects on what decades among bees have taught him.
“The honeybee is a social insect,” he said. “It survives through cooperation. No bee lives only for itself. Perhaps human society has forgotten that lesson.”
Outside the train window, the landscape of central India slips into darkness — forests, farms, villages and railway crossings blurring into one another. Somewhere beyond them, bees continue their ancient migrations between flowering trees and cultivated fields, quietly holding ecosystems together.
Paliwal knows their future remains uncertain. Climate change, chemical-intensive agriculture and shrinking habitats continue to threaten them.
But he also believes conservation cannot happen through slogans alone. It requires patient work: training collectors, building local enterprises, strengthening markets, protecting habitats and restoring respect for ecological relationships.
He said the journey would not have been possible without support from Sunita Paliwal, Mukund Uikey, Madan Jambhulkar, Shasi Jambulkar, Ramprasad Thakre, Shashikala Bolkar, Sachin Khandate and hundreds of tribal honey collectors. He also acknowledges the support of institutions including NABARD, Pune; Polaris Foundation, Chennai; and ICICI Bank Pvt Ltd, Mumbai.
“The survival of bees is ultimately about the survival of human humility,” he said.
And perhaps that is the uncomfortable truth humming beneath his life’s work: that the fate of forests, farms and food chains may depend on whether humans learn, once again, how to live like the hive.
Aniket Likhar works as regional coordinator for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN) in Nagpur, Maharashtra. Views expressed are the authors' own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth