Analysis of Honey Bee Production Opportunities and Challenges in Central Zone of Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

This study was conducted in three purposively selected districts of central zone of Tigray, namely, Kolla Tembien, Tanqua Abergelle and Weri'e Leke. The overall objective of the study was to analyze the major honey bee production opportunities and challenges in the study area. For this study a total of 135 beekeepers were randomly and proportionately selected from each study districts. The data collected was analyzed descriptive statistics and Musa et al rank index were employed to analyze the data on challenges and opportunities. According to survey result, the respondents of the study districts could harvest 1.83, 1.36 and 1 times per annum from traditional, modern and transitional hives respectively. The productivity of the traditional hive is significantly low (p<0.05) in Kolla Tembien(16.6 kg) as compared to Tanqua Abergelle (29.7 kg) and Weri'e leke (21.5 kg) districts. 94% of the beekeepers daily followed the bee hives to check the presence of honey bee enemies. The honey bee production system of the study area has been reported to face with different major challenging factors such as water scarcity (96.5%), financial problem (91.1%), pests and predators (89.6%), poor extension services (65.6%), shortage of bee forages (56.2%) and high input cost (36.8%). Financial problem in Kolla Tembien is significantly higher (p<0.05) than Tanqua Abergelle and Weri'e leke districts but input cost problem in Weri'e leke is significantly higher (p<0.05) than Tanqua Abergelle district. Poor extension services related to beekeeping is more pressing factor in Weri'e leke (p<0.05) than the other two districts. The households also listed the major pests and predators of honey bee and were captured using rank index; ants (0.3), death head hawks moth (0.23), birds (0.2), honey badger (0.08) and lizard (0.07). Despite these limitations, there are many opportunities for beekeeping in the study area; access of bee hives, sustainable honey market price, healthy bee colonies and good infrastructure. In order to sustain the beekeeping activitys of the study area, it is recommended that there should be affordable and appropriate extension service, supplying cheap bee keeping inputs, capacitating to beekeepers i.e. pests and predators control mechanism, .