Potential of stingless bee farm for agriculturally based urban community development in Bandung, West Java

¹ Postgradudate Student on Environment Science, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia
² Center for Environment and Sustainability Science, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia
³ Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: dika.supyandi@unpad.ac.id

Abstract

The existence of pollinators is highly significant in ensuring sustainability of agriculture produces. Among several pollinators, bees are the most recognized and common in the plant world. In general, two species of bees are identified, namely sting bees and stingless bees. In a middle of the city of Bandung, several stingless beehives have been kept by a community. This paper aims to describe the process of the bee farm, motives behind the farming, participation of community members, and how far this bee farm activities potential to community development. This paper is written based on qualitative research process implementing deep interview, observations, and interview with stakeholders. The results show that stingless bee farm has the potential to improve the processes and outcomes of urban community development, even though hitherto it has not been carried out commercially and profitable; motives of the farm was for environmental protection reasons such as improving the physical environment in the area not for financial/economic reasons; the participation of group members in various group activities can be categorized to be good; two major impacts received by the community are increased social cohesion among community members and improved quality of the physical environment in the area.