An informal network of farmers, artisans, students, academicians and scientists began in late eighties. They believed in IPR of peasants and advocated development activity based on the knowledge system of local people. This network was called Honey Bee Network (HBN). The name Honey Bee signifies a philosophy of discourse which is authentic, accountable and fair. Honey bee does two things. Honey bee collects pollen without impoverishing the flowers, and it connects flower to flower through pollination. The idea of HBN is that when it collects knowledge of people, it ensure that people don't become poorer after sharing their insights. Further, it connects one innovator with another through feedback, communication and networking in their local language. HBN shares with the providers of knowledge what it did with the knowledge.
Honey Bee is an experiment in people to people learning: English language connects us globally but alienates locally. We can not reach the people from whom we have learnt. Thus, while we grow in our careers and achieve wider recognition and professional rewards, the people suffer, often silently. The ethics of knowledge extraction, its documentation, dissemination and abstraction into theories, institutions or technologies is thus the central concern. Honey Bee is brought out in six languages through collaborators. Honey Bee network supports National Innovation Foundation and GIAN.
HBN insists, in its work, that three principles are followed without fail
- Whatever is learnt from the people must be shared with them in their language acknowledging every knowledge provider the knowledge rich economically poor people must not be allowed to become anonymous.
- Cross pollination as attempted by bees must be facilitated through local language communication for lateral learning.
- Just as bees do not complain when nectar is taken away, similarly people should not feel short changed when their knowledge is taken away. A fair share of any wealth, or other gains accrued through use of the knowledge provided by people must be shared back with the knowledge providers and their community.
The Honey Bee newsletter is now brought out in seven local languages, the most recent entrant being the Oriya version in April 2002.
Informal and voluntary in nature and spirit, the Network has its partners spread allover India and 75 other countries. The Honey Bee database of innovations and valuable traditional knowledge now contains more than 23, 000 examples in its distributed database.
There are cases where such knowledge and innovations find its way to the problems of a different country. For example a practice by pastoralists in Mongolia solved selenium deficiency problem in the young calves in Canada; the know how of an innovative foot pump designed in Gujarat, India found a licensee in USA. This shows the potential of the network and the global dimension of the value chain.