Cabbage is a cross-pollinated crop because of sporophytic self-incompatibility, and honey bees play an important role in its pollination. Though Asian honey bees, Apis cerana F., are used in pollination of cabbage, the rate of visitation, behavior, pollinator efficacy, and impact on seed-set are to be determined. Apis cerana occupy a share of 19.18% of all the flower visitors of cabbage in natural habitat of North Western Indian Himalayas. Pollination behavior in terms of peak activity, flowers processed per unit time, time spent per flower, and time spent in search of flowers are studied separately for both pollen and nectar foragers. Pollinator effectiveness as measured by seed set in flowers excluded from bee visitation, single bee visit, and unrestricted pollinator visits was 0.11. Studies on the impact of A. cerana bee pollination in cabbage seed production revealed an increase of 17.28% in siliqua per panicle, with 26.11% increase in seed yield. For assessing the requirement of A. cerana to pollinate one hectare of cabbage, flower availability and the speed with which the pollen and nectar foragers process the flowers are taken into consideration. A forager is estimated to pollinate 4,780 flowers a day, but cabbage flower requires 9.09 visits of A. cerana for optimum seed set. Thus, a maximum of 4,999 bee foragers or 8.33 colonies are needed to effectively pollinate 1 ha of cabbage. Though A. cerana is a good pollinator, our findings suggest that it is not an ideal pollinator of cabbage.

Honey bees suffer from a cosmic array of biotic and abiotic stress during their life cycle. The insect pests like wax moths and Dermestid beetles contribute immensely to the damage of bee colonies and reduction in honey yield in tropical regions of India. While, the bee colonies in temperate regions of Indian Himalayas, face an entirely different set of hitches that include predation of forager bees by three hornet species (Vespa mandarinia, Vespa velutina nigrithorax and Vespa tropica). The attacks on bee colonies by these hornet species compel the bees to desert the colony and swarm away to a new habitat thus, causing severe economic losses to bee keepers. Considering the severe setbacks enforced by hornets, a low-cost hornet trap was designed. The bait ingredients and their trapping efficiency against targeted hornet species are presented herewith. It was observed that green colored bottles attracted 34 hornets of three species in 10 days, while transparent bottles attracted only seven hornets at bait proportions of 1:2:2 (Apple cedar Vinegar: orange juice: water). Moreover, to reduce the attraction of honey bees into the trap, supplementary ingredients like rotten fruits and market honey were used, which enhanced the trapping efficiency of hornets. The benefit-cost ratio of 12.30:1 was recorded after the installation of the trap, which was significantly superior to traditional method (1.64:1) of manual swatting of hornets in the apiary. The farmers are currently trained to design and use these traps for the management of hornet pests in the Indian Himalayas.

Onion (Allium cepa L.) is a highly cross pollinated crop that needs insect pollination (entomophily) for optimum seed set. In the present study, more than 120 insect species were noted to visit onion flowers, out of which fifty-nine species were collected through in-situ sampling technique and identified up to species level. The Indian bee (Apis cerana indica) was the most abundant insect pollinator visiting onion flowers in the study location. The pollination behaviour and foraging activity of A. c. indica were assessed, and the pollen foragers were observed to be swift flyers visiting a significantly higher number of flowers per minute during the peak flowering period and spending less time per flower (3 seconds) to collect nectar from deep seated nectaries of the flowers. The seed yield enhancement assessed through entomophily and artificial pollination methods showed that the open pollinated flowers recorded the highest yield statistically, followed by A. c. indica and A. mellifera pollinated flowers. However in artificial pollination treatments, sponge puff pollinated flowers recorded significantly high seed yield per hectare and percentage seed set per umbel, followed by camel brush, hand gloves (cloth) and hand gloves (rubber). In conclusion, all the cross pollination treatments were statistically significant on the closed pollination treatment concerning to the entire yield parameters calculated.