Representative Zhang Li (middle) and relevant experts investigated bee breeding in She County, Anhui Province. When it comes to bees, people may first think of honey, propolis, royal jelly and other bee products for daily consumption, but as an important pollinating insect, bees are of more important significance for maintaining the ecological balance of agriculture and promoting the green, healthy and high-quality development of agriculture. The National People's Congress is about to be held, the National People's Congress, Anhui Provincial Animal Husbandry Technology Extension Station Director Zhang Li carefully prepared a "Proposal on Integrating the Bee Industry into the Strategy of Sustainable Agricultural Development", ready to submit to the General Assembly, hoping to promote the integrated development of "small bees" and "big agriculture", improve agricultural efficiency, increase farmers' income, and ensure food security. As part of animal husbandry, Zhang Li has been focusing on the bee industry for a long time. At the 2021 National People's Congress, after research, she submitted a proposal to the conference on further improving the bee industry for the reference of relevant departments. She told reporters that 91 of China's 107 major crops rely on bees for pollination, such as blueberries, strawberries, rapeseed, cotton and so on. At present, the total annual output value of China's bee industry is about 420 billion yuan, of which the output value of bee pollination to promote the value-added of agricultural and forestry products accounts for 350 billion yuan, while the annual output value of bee products is only 30 billion yuan. In other words, bee pollination is far more valuable to agriculture than bee products such as honey itself, but unfortunately many people have not yet realized this. After the 2023 National People's Congress, taking the opportunity of implementing the pilot project of bee pollination given by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs to Anhui Province, Zhang Li went south and north to start a comprehensive survey of the bee industry. In April of that year, she first went to Dangshan County in northern Anhui, which is known as the "pear capital of the world", and then went south to Huangshan and She County in southern Anhui. Since then, she has gone out of the province to Guangxi and Shanxi, and also participated in the 2023 National Bee Industry Conference held in Xinxian County, Henan Province in November of that year. During the investigation, Zhang Li had extensive contact with beekeepers, bee product processing enterprises, beekeeper cooperatives, industry experts and scholars, and heads of bee product industry organizations, listened carefully to their insights, and worked together to promote the high-quality development path of the bee industry. In Zhang Li's view, the four major problems of insufficient scientific and technological support, uneven quality of bee products, general aging of beekeepers, and the lack of established paid pollination mechanism have seriously restricted the high-quality development of China's bee industry. Taking paid pollination as an example, China, as the country with the most abundant nectar resources in the world, accounts for less than 5% of the total number of bee colonies for leased pollination of field crops at this stage, only 776% of beekeepers have rented out or ** bee colonies to pollinate crops for a fee, and the average annual pollination income does not exceed 1% of the total income.
The scale of bee pollination industry is an important indicator of the development of beekeeping, and the paid bee pollination industry needs to be developed urgently. Zhang Li said that many developed agricultural countries have made bee pollination a national strategy, because the economic and ecological value of pollination and its services far exceeds the value of producing honey and other bee products. To this end, Zhang Li suggested strengthening top-level design, improving industry standards, increasing investment in scientific research, increasing support, and strengthening publicity and education. Zhang Li believes that the bee industry should be taken as an important starting point for the development of important agricultural characteristic industries and the promotion of rural revitalization strategy from the perspective of maintaining agricultural ecological balance and ensuring food security, and be included in the local agricultural sustainable development strategy, and systematically and scientifically plan the layout of the bee industry. For relevant departments, Zhang Li suggested formulating specifications and standards for the use of pesticides during the flowering period of crops, strictly controlling the application of pesticides and pesticides during bee pollination, and optimizing the living environment of bees. At the same time, it is also necessary to improve and promote the relevant standards of bee breeding management and bee products, and promote the standardization of the bee industry. In addition, it is necessary to speed up the establishment of a germplasm resource bank and gene bank of Chinese honey bees, and carry out the selection and breeding of improved bee varieties; Intensify research on the ecological effects of bee pollination, and tap the potential of bee pollination to increase the yield of cash crops; Strengthen cooperation with universities and research institutes, use new technologies such as molecular biology, and fight the tough battle of "stuck neck" technology.
In terms of support and support, Zhang Li suggested the introduction of relevant policies to promote the development of beekeeping, support beekeepers and cooperatives to update beekeeping equipment, accelerate the construction of informatization, beekeeping technology training, pollination subject cultivation, bee product quality improvement, quality and safety traceability, etc., and give beekeepers subsidies and preferential credit, insurance and other financial policies to improve beekeepers' risk response capabilities. "It is also very necessary and urgent to build a number of bee industry development demonstration areas, bee seed farms, bee conservation farms, bee standardization demonstration farms, and crop efficient bee pollination bases. Zhang Li said.