Honeybees Keeping Practices and its Constraints in Mekelle City, Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

A cross-sectional study was conducted with the objectives of assessing honeybees keeping practices, constraints and enemies in Mekelle city. A purposive sampling technique was used, and primary data were collected from a total of (n=75) honeybees’ keepers from five sub cities (Kedamay Weyane, Hadinet, Semien, Ayder and Quiha) using structured and semi structured questionnaires. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20. It was revealed that, the overall percentage of male respondents was 96% o and 73.3% of them were above 40 years old. Moreover, 69.3% of the respondents had had more than 10 years of honeybees farming experience. Moreover, 10.7% of the respondents were engaged only in honeybees farming, whereas the remaining were engaged in more than one agricultural activity. Majority of the respondents (68%) were having modern hives. Most of the modern hives (64%) were Kenyan Top Bar hives. This study has also shown that, 78.7% of the respondents harvest honey from modern hives once per annum. In this study, it was revealed that the average amount of honey produced per a modern hive per annum ranges from 10-20 kilograms. Feed shortage, lack of training and shortage of land for apiary were ranked from first to third ranks, respectively as the main constraints for honeybees keeping practices. Finally, herbicides, pesticides and both birds and ants were ranked from first to third ranks, respectively as the main enemies for honeybees. Generally, this study has assessed the farming activity, honeybees keeping experience, type of beehives, harvesting frequency, amount of honey produced per hive per annum, and the major constraints for honeybees keeping practices and honeybees’ enemies in the study area. Therefore, an urgent intervention is required to alleviate the existing constraints of the keeping honeybees to boost productivity and improve livelihood of the honeybees’ keepers.