Assessment of bee flora and development of a floral calendar in relation to pharmaceutical potential of honey and bee pollen in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India

Beekeeping is a common practice throughout India and it is an invaluable source of revenue for families in the countryside. The ecological distribution and availability of honey bee floral resources varies depending on when they flower. Therefore, it is crucial to distinguish honey bee plants from all other plants, map their spatial and temporal distributions, and assess their proportional benefits to bee populations and honey production throughout this region. Moreover, the medicinal properties and quality of honey greatly depends on the variety of flowers visited by honeybees. The species that bees visit imparts certain characteristics to the honey, including pleasant flavour, distinctive colour, and pharmaceutical advantageous attributes. The present investigation was carried out to learn more about various kinds of bee flora and to create a floral calendar for the Varanasi and Mirzapur districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh. The flowering plants were visited, their flowering duration was noted and checked for an appearance of honeybees and their foraging behavior was observed. The results revealed that flowering plants in this area were of different types such as vegetables, cereals, oilseeds, fruit crops, ornamental, plantation and weeds. The identified bee flora was further categorized into pollen and/or nectar-producing plants. Mid-October to March; August to September were identified as honey flow periods and mid-April to July was identified as the critical dearth periods in the year. A floral calendar was developed for the study area based on the availability of bee flora, utility status and flowering time. This study documents for the first time bee floral resources and prepared the floral calendar for Varanasi and Mirzapur districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh. The study area is well-suited for bee foraging; care must be taken to preserve the current bee flora and encourage the growth of species of plants that serve a variety of purposes to make it resilient for beekeeping.