Bee-keeping or apiculture is the maintenance of hives of honeybees for the production of honey, to has been an age-old cottage industry. Honey is a food of high nutritive value and also find its use in the indigenous systems of medicine. Honeybee also produces beeswax, which finds many uses in industry, such as in the preparation of cosmetics and polishes of various kinds. The increased demand of honey has led to large-scale beekeeping practices; it has become an established income generating industry, whether practiced on a small or on a large scale.

Bees are the pollinators of many of our crop species such as sunflower, Brass tea, apple and pear. Keeping beehives in crop fields during flowering period increases pollination efficiency and improves the yield-beneficial both from the point of view of crop yield and honey yield.