Abstract
This study was conducted in districts of Wolaita and Dawro zones, Southern Ethiopia with objectives of assessing constraints and opportunities for beekeeping production. Multistage purposive sampling procedure was employed for 180 respondents. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. The results showed that majority of the respondents kept honey bees for consumption and income generation, while very few reported they kept honey bee for consumption, income generation, teaching and income generation. Major of the constraints for beekeeping included but not limited to honeybee pests and diseases, lack of modern equipments, absconding, swarming, bee predators, lack of skilled man power, lack of appropriate apiary site, finance limitation, lack of market, agro-chemicals, shortage of water availability and shortage of bee forages. On the other hand, major opportunities for beekeeping were reported to be suitable climate, availability of bee forages, sufficient rainfall, water availability as well as bee colony and race availability. Regardless of the presence of a number of constraints facing beekeeping such as pests and diseases and limitation to modern equipments’ input, there are also opportunities which, proves their importance. It was therefore, recommended that modern beekeeping production system should be introduced to farmers in order to help them improve the quantity and quality of honey production. Key words: Assessment, beekeeping constraints, honey, honeybee, opportunities.
Highlights
Bee keeping is one of the agricultural sub-sectors that most suits the rural poor people
This study was conducted in districts of Wolaita and Dawro zones, Southern Ethiopia with objectives of assessing constraints and opportunities for beekeeping production
The results showed that majority of the respondents kept honey bees for consumption and income generation, while very few reported they kept honey bee for consumption, income generation, teaching and income generation
Summary
Bee keeping is one of the agricultural sub-sectors that most suits the rural poor people. The bee keeping sub-sector has a lot uses for improvement of the livelihood of communities as it creates job for many people who engage in the production, trading and processing of bee products at different levels of market linkage and industry cottages (ARSD, 2000; Gezahegn, 2001; Gemechis et al, 2012). Beekeeping has contributions in sustainability and balancing the natural resources by assisting plants pollination and in turn, the activity in bee keeping is environmentally friendly and has no impact on the environment, rather it stabilizes fragile areas and helps in retrieving degraded lands and increases biodiversity.
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