Some harvesters would cut off the whole hive from the branch, instead of just extracting a slice of the honeycomb and enabling the bees to rebuild on the same hive. Others would chop down the entire tree to attain the hive.

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Kuvarshing Pandhare has been harvesting for Heavenly Organics since the company was founded in 2005. He now earns around 2 lakh Rupees ($3000) a month Mike Leibowitz

A lifelong lover of sustainable agriculture, Ishwar was perturbed by these techniques. Being a tenacious man, he didn't give up. Instead, Heavenly Organics offered free training and incentivized a sustainable harvest. "We set limits like 1,000 kilos for each family at first," hehave peace. People in conflict areas, they don't need charity money, what they need is a job."


But building Heavenly Organics was not easy. Father and son put in more than $300,000 (£212,000) of their own money before seeing returns and the first five years resulted in substantial losses while they figured out the complex supply chain. But now the company is growing positively, Amit says, with the product available in more than 5,000 stores in four countries: the US, UK, Japan, and Canada. But more than growth figures, the Hoodas are keen to flaunt their bee mathematics: according to Amit, the company harvests from over 23,000 hives, protecting over 500 million bees in the forests and jungles of India.

The tagline of the company is "one sweet world." Amit