author(s)
Anurag Sharma, Rajeev Raina, Renu Kapoor, Kehar Singh Thakur and Manish Thakur

abstract
Indian honey bee, Apis cerana, is a part of natural heritage of mountain community and is known as indigenous bee. It is an excellent pollinator of mountain crops and helps in the maintenance of biodiversity. Indigenous methods of keeping bee colonies in log and wall hives are still common in Himachal Pradesh. This bee is under threat in hills due to replacement of kuccha house with pucca house, intensive use of insecticides and decrease in forest covers. Thus the present study focuses and targets on providing traditional but modern and scientific bee hives for its conservation. Fixed mud hives are constructed from the locally available material like clay, straw, fresh cow dung, stones etc., which are easily available to farmers. These mud hives are economical to the farmers and are having benefits over traditional wall hives or modern ISI hives. Scientific beekeeping with A. cerana is possible in these hives, which was otherwise not possible with traditional hives. Conservation of these bees is also helpful to the orchardists for enhancing the productivity of apple up to 69.50%.