Azril Dino (left) and his assistant checking the kelulut beehive box. — Bernama photo
KUALA PILAH: A local honey entrepreneur, Azril Dino Abd Malik, is helping to save trees with his invention Technohive, a box that looks like a forest tree trunk and serves as a beehive for the ‘kelulut’, a stingless bee.
“Cutting down trees and taking out the colony from the forest is not good for the ecosystem. It may even cause the extinction of this stingless bee within 30 years, and this will eventually affect our ecosystem,” he told Bernama recently.
According to the 40-year old, the kelulut is “an engineer of the forest”, as it is an important pollinator for plants to reproduce, and this in turn contributes to the survival of the forest ecosystem.
Azril Dino shows the inside of the kelulut beehive box. — Bernama photo
While the bee usually nests in hollow trunks or tree branches, Technohive can produce honey faster and multiply the colony naturally without the need to cut a tree, he explained, adding that the process of transferring the bee colony together with its queen bee has to be done cautiously at night when the bees are still in their hive.
The kelulut honey industry is fast developing and spawning successful entrepreneurs like Azril Dino whose ‘Dinokelulut’ farm is able to produce 100 kilogrammes of kelulut honey a month and generate an income of about RM20,000, depending on the weather of course.
The boxes can be purchased at between RM1,200 and RM1,600 per unit, and according to the entrepreneur, can last up to 10 years. — Bernama