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Field trip to Raika Honey apiary and Goa Chitra Museum

On the 30th of March 2022 the students of FY Biotech of St. Xavier's college were taken on a

field trip organized by Miss Jenica Rangel to Raika Honey Apiary Bee nursery and training
centre, Benaulim and to Goa Chitra, an ethnographic museum. We were accompanied by

three teachers: Ms. Jenica Rangel, Dr. Maria Cordeiro and Ms. Vrunda Raikar.

We left for the bee apiary at 8:00 am from Mapusa bus stand while a few students and teachers

joint us on our way to the apiary. We reached Benaulim at about 10:00 am after which the
class was divided into 2 groups. The first batch was taken into the bee nursery while the other

batch waited patiently for their turn.

The owner of Raika enterprise, Mr. Suprajit Raika himself walked us through the process of
bee keeping. He started the session by showing us the bee boxes and explaining about their

structure and function. He showed us the seven rows in the bee boxes and their carrying
capacity for the beehive. He added that around 5000 bees resided in one bee box where there
was one queen bee, few drones and a majority of worker bees. He also showed us how to

differentiate and identify the queen, the drone and the worker bees from one another. The
bees reared in this apiary are Sateri bees which produce multiflora honey. We were also given

the chance to observe the honeycomb closely and to look at the different bees, their larvae and
the nectar stored in the comb. A detailed description on how the bees perform functions of

nectar collections was also given to us. We learnt a lot of interesting facts such as 1g of honey
is produced by a single bee when it has pollinated 500-600 flowers consecutively. We also

learnt the difference between nectar and honey.

The workings of the Raika apiary were mentioned to us along with the forests they keep their

bee hives in. We all were extremely inspired by Mr. Suprajit's vision behind starting Raika and
the incredible job he has done integrating the welfare of nature. The farmers and the economy

at the enterprise not only supports farmers by training them in bee keeping but also gives back
some of the enterprise's profits to them. All our questions pertaining to the enterprise and bee
keeping wee entertained by Mr. Raika and we ended the session feeling extremely

enlightened. We were then given the opportunity to purchase products sold by Raika
enterprise such as beeswax, raw honey, candles, etc. A few of us took this opportunity to

support the enterprise and purchased a few products.

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