Pesticides Use, Practice and Its Effect on Honeybee in Ethiopia: A Review

Zekiros Fikadu

doi:10.7176/fsqm/92-02

Abstract

Honeybees play an essential economic role in the pollination of crops. Farmers were buying, storing, and use pesticides on cultivated plants with no or little consideration of the effect on honeybees. In Ethiopia, pesticide poisoning of honeybees has increased from time to time, and beekeepers also lose their colonies due to unwise use and improper practice of pesticides. Ethiopia has developed a legal framework on pesticide registration, distribution, and use. But regulations are not strictly implemented by the farmers, and it needs enforcement. Farmers use pesticides on crops with no or little consideration on the effect of honeybees, and the use of pesticides harmful to pollination service, behavior, communication, forage resource, poisoning, and contaminated hive products. Effective communication between beekeepers and crop growers while spraying is required to minimize the impact of pesticides on honeybees. Research should focus on the effects of pesticide use on honeybees and the means of reducing its impact. Keywords: Effect, Honeybee, Pesticide, Pollination, Use DOI : 10.7176/FSQM/92-02 Publication date: December 31 st 2019

Highlights

Pesticide refers to a wide range of compounds including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, molluscicides and plant growth regulators
Use of chemical pesticides was applied as integrated package projects including the Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit (CADU), Wolaita Agricultural Development Unit (WADU), Minimum Package Project (MPP) under the Extension and Project Implementation Department (EPID) by the Ministry of Agriculture (Tadesse 2016)
Improper use of insecticide leads to the honeybee death (Chauzat et al, 2006: MOWR, 2007) and decline of honeybee products and crop yield are among the significant constraints of beekeeping sector (Melisie et al, 2015)

Summary

Introduction

Pesticide refers to a wide range of compounds including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, molluscicides and plant growth regulators. Improper use of pesticides in crop production is a source of socio-economic conflict among farmers. In Ethiopia, the poisoning of honeybees by application of pesticides has increased from time to time, and some beekeepers were lost all their colonies due to agrochemical applications (Kerealem et al, 2009). Insecticides and herbicides had been reported as significant causes of the death of the colonies and absconding (Melaku et al, 2008; Desalegn, 2014; Melisie et al, 2016; Krystyna et al, 2017; Guesh et al, 2018). Improper use of insecticide leads to the honeybee death (Chauzat et al, 2006: MOWR, 2007) and decline of honeybee products and crop yield are among the significant constraints of beekeeping sector (Melisie et al, 2015)

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion