Practices and Challenges of Beekeeping in Chiro District of West Hararghe Zone, Eastern Oromia, Ethiopia

Abstracts: Ethiopia is the leading honey producer in Africa and one of the ten largest honeyproducing countries in the world. However, low productivity and poor quality of honey and other beeproducts are the major constraints faced by honey producers. The exact number of people engaged inhoney production and the challenges they face are not well known. Lack of documented informationon honey production and challenges hinders extension supports. Therefore, a survey was conductedin Chiro district (woreda) in 2013/2014 with the objective of eliciting information on practices ofhoney production, beekeeping management systems and associated challenges faced by honeyproducing farmers in the study area. Six representative peasant associations were selected using apurposive sampling method. A total of 120 beekeepers were interviewed on major beekeepingmanagement practice and challenges they were facing. The results were subjected to descriptivestatistics using SPSS. Of all the respondents, only 8 (6.7%) were women. A total of 863, 818traditional beehives and 45 modern beehives were owned by the respondents. The average numbersof traditional and modern beehives owned per respondent were 6.87 and 0.38 respectively. Only58.8% of the traditional beehives and 46.7% of the modern beehives were colonized by bees while theremaining ones were empty. Most (53.4%) of the respondents kept the beehives under the roof oftheir houses where as 30.7% kept them in the garden; 15.1% inside the house, and the 0.8% on trees.The main sources of the foundation colony were three, i.e., catching bee swarms, gift from family, andbuying. The major challenges were shortage of bee colonies, escalating prices of modern hives andtheir accessories as well as low level of extension services. It is concluded that honey production inthe study area is dominated by traditional practices, and constrained by shortage of bee colonies,inadequate farmers’ technical know-how and practical skills, high prices of modern hives and theiraccessories, lack of practically supported extension services on modern beekeeping technologies,incidences of pests, low participation of women, and lack of year-round availability bee forage. Theresults imply that the sector needs tangible supports from the extension system in terms of improvedtechnologies as well as in building knowledge of farmers for better management of honey bees toincrease productivity and income of households through honey production