Abstract
The bee forage includes survey of forage plants, assessment of the relative merits of the component species as sources of nectar and pollen, their flowering sequence and floral calendar during seasonal cycle. Himachal Pradesh, owing to its varied agro-climate, has a great variety of bee forage sources which provide the basis for development of beekeeping industry in the state. Bee keeping with Apis cerana is a common practice among the rural communities of the Kullu valley in the state. The identification of the existing bee flora will be useful to evaluate the suitability of Katrain area for A.cerana beekeeping and particularly to find out the dearth periods that would help to combat the shortage of food either by suitable feeding or migration of bee colonies to forage rich areas. This will be helpful in the formulation of the action plans for effective management of the A. cerana bee based livelihood avenues of the mountain people.
Keywords
Apis cerana, bee forage, beekeeping, dearth period, food shortage, Mountain livelihood, nectar, pollen, Katrain, Kullu valley, Himachal Pradesh