Review on Trends of Beekeeping Practices and Economic Benefit the Sector in Ethiopia

Abstract

The review summarizes on past and current trends of beekeeping practices and economic benefit the sector in Ethiopia. Mainly five types of honeybee races exist across different agro-ecological area based on adaptive behavior, which are characterized under three production system namely, traditional (forest and backyard), transitional (intermediate) and modern (frame type hive). All regions of Ethiopia produces honey, but their production potential is various based on suitability of the regions for beekeeping i.e. density of bee’s forages across the region is different.  About 95.89% of Ethiopia beehive population covered by traditional beekeeping practices while remaining 4.11% consists of transitional and modern hive types.  In Ethiopia, beekeeping product like honey is below expected compared to potential because of dominated by traditional production system, it is lacks of improved technologies, skillful human power, expensive of equipment for translated to intermediate as well as frame type hive under rural and per- urban production activities. Economic benefit of beekeeping has been directly contributes to the incomes of households and the economy of the nation such as honey, beeswax, queen and bee colonies, and indirectly products such as pollen, royal jelly, bee venom, and propolis in cosmetics and medicine. From total volume of honey production in country, only about 10% of the honey produced in the country is consumed by the beekeeping households while the remaining 90% is sold for income generation and of this amount, it is estimated that 80% is used for tej brewing. Economic contribution and per-capital consumption of beekeeping product still unbalanced proportional to much amount honeybee population in country due to technical and socio-economic constraint. Therefore, enhance use of beekeeping sector provide attention for intermediate as well as frame type production system.

Keywords: beekeeping, races, economic, honeybee, honey, consumption

DOI: 10.7176/ALST/96-01

Publication date: December 31^st 2022