Socio-Economic Analysis of Beekeeping and the Effects of Beehive Types on Honey Production

Abstract

Turkey has considerable potential in beekeeping with her rich flora, proper ecological conditions and existence of colony. However Turkish beekeeping sector has not utilized the rich natural resources sufficiently. Turkey is one of the most important honey producer countries. In Turkey, 200 000 agricultural organizations have activities in apiculture. But, only 20 000 of these organizations deal with apiculture as their main source of income. Apiculture sector in Turkey still has faced to some important problems with respect to high chemical use in the hives and marketing and export problems caused by quality of honey, mix harvest, and so on. The aim of this research is to analyze of apiaries’ technical and economic aspects in Turkey. The total numbers of surveyed of apiaries in Bursa province of Turkey are 80 in 2008 production period. Although it has high quality honey production, Bursa province has the highest quality pollen production in Turkey. First of all, technical and economic aspects of beekeepers are given under three sub-groups by the number of colonies (50≥, 51-100, 101≤). One of the principal factors is use of the old types of beehive. In this paper, the effect of old and new type beehive use on the honey production in Turkey has been examined. A time series data between 1936 and 2005 has been used in analyzing by ARD model.