Honey production and marketing system in three selected districtes of kembata tembaro zone, soutern Ethiopia

Abstract

A study on honey production and marketing systems was conducted in three selected districts of Kembata Tembaro Zone of Southern Ethiopia. The specific objectives of the study were to assess honey production and marketing system opportunities and constraints in the study area. Producer’s interview was the sources of the primary data while, secondary data was taken from Kembata Tembaro Zone. The study districts were classified based on agro ecology as highland (2600-3100 m.a.s.l.), mid- land (1501 to 2500 m.a.s.l.) and lowland (below 1500 m.a.s.l.). From each selected agro ecology, two PA’s were purposively selected based on potentials for honeybee colonies and honey production. A total of 180 households were randomly selected using systematic random sampling method from the six PA’s. Questionnaire based survey as well as PRA techniques were employed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. Beekeeping is dominantly practiced by male households in highland (98.3%) and midland (95%) and lowland (93.3%) of the study area. In the study area, three types of honeybee production practices were identified, namely: traditional, transitional and movable frame hives. About 76% of bee hives owned by the beekeepers was traditional hives, while the remaining 19.4% and 4.6% of hives were movable frame and top bar bee hives, respectively. The main purposes of keeping honeybees were for both income generation and home consumption. The major sources of the foundation colony were catching swarm (76.2%) then followed by (21.1%) gift from parent and buying (2.2%). The overall mean honeybee colony holding per HH in the study areas was (7.91 ±7.27). The average colony holding (10.88± 8.34) of lowland households was significantly (p<0.001) higher than midland (8.52 ± 7.83) and highland (4.32 ±4.32) areas. According to the 55% of the respondents, honey harvesting is done twice, (43.9%) once and 1.1% three times per year. The lowland respondents had the highest mean honey production of 115.8kg / year / HH than midland (71.85kg) and highland (14.10kg)/year/HH). The average productivity of traditional, transitional and movable frame bee hives in 2013 was 4.28±2.12, 10.22 ± 4.75 and 17.16 ±5.89 kg / year, respectively. About 35.6% of respondents did not control swarming while, some of them (64.4%) control swarming by cutting and removing some part of brood combs. The overall average annual gross income of the studied respondents from beekeeping was Birr 2,053.38 Birr/HH /year and it was significantly different (p<0.001) among the three districts. The overall average price of crude honey and table honey in the study area was 29.5 Birr/kg and 51.2Birr/kg respectively. The major constraints to exploit the untapped potential of beekeeping activity in the study areas were incidence of pest, shortage of beekeeping equipment, shortage of bee forage, high costs of modern hives, absconding, poor extension service, pesticide and herbicide, inadequate access to training and excessive rain fall. Therefore, the results suggest that beekeeping development efforts should be focused on Practical oriented training on improved beekeeping practices should be given for the farmers and development agents to alleviate the major constraints. There is a need to enhance extension services in the area and also credit provision need to be facilitated to supply improved beehives and accessory equipment.