Honey Production and Marketing in Ethiopian

Abstract

The beekeeping subsector has been an integral part of agriculture in Ethiopia. It has been contributing to the household income and poverty alleviation and national economy through export. The country has huge apicultural resources that made it the leading honey and beeswax producer in Africa. Moreover, Ethiopia is a country where apicultural research is being conducted in a coordinated manner under the national agricultural research system. Hence, a lot of information have been gathered on different aspects of the beekeeping. This is a review of various research results that are from published and unpublished papers over a long period of time in the course of the apicultural research. It has been revealed that the country’s beekeeping subsector is mainly practiced using traditional basket hives with low productivity. However, attempts by various investigators and development actors showed that both the production and quality can be improved in terms of transforming the beekeeping system, processing and marketing. This review paper also tried to address both the domestic and international honey marketing and identified some of the major challenges that are obstacles to the possible maximization of benefits by producers and the whole national economy.