A Beekeeping Practices, Trends, Constraints and Future Scenario in Ethiopia: A review

Abstract

Beekeeping is traditionally a longstanding and environmental friendly agricultural activity that appears as ancient history of the country. Beekeeping has high potentials and sustainable activity for the rural community through giving direct cash income source, especially for the smallholder farmers. It has direct and indirect contribution to the economic development of the country. It directly gives the precious product honey and other hive products like beeswax, propolis, bee brood, bee venom, royal jelly, pollen and bee colony and indirectly it contributes to maintaining of biodiversity and environmental protection through pollination, increase of many crop productions and creation of job for land less youth and women. Currently, there are three main types of beekeeping practices in the country, these are traditional (forest and back yard), transitional and modern beekeeping practices. However, the majority (more than 95%) of Ethiopian beekeepers followed traditional beekeeping practice that resulted in relatively low honey yield and poor quality. In this review, applications of pesticides, pests and predators, honeybee forages, extensions services, market information and market problems identifies as major beekeeping constraints in Ethiopia. Despite the challenges and constraints, the country has the largest honeybee populations in Africa with over 10 million bee colonies of which 5 to 7.5 million are hived while the remain is feral colonies.  Indeed, Ethiopia has higher potentials than the current honey production due to plentiful beekeeping resources, like available of flowering plants, abundance honeybee populations, suitable environmental condition, indigenous knowledge and experience of beekeepers, and socio-economic value of honeybee products. In addition to these opportunities, currently the government also gives attention to the sub-sector by developing beekeeping initiatives and queen rearing center in order to utilize the existing natural resources properly. Generally, in this review an effort was made to address all beekeeping practices, trends, constraints and opportunities in order to avails the existing information as one document that are obstacles to the possible maximizations of productions by producers and the whole national economy of the country.