Abstract:
The study is carried out of SehalaSeyemtWoredaWagHimraZoneAmharaRegion. The objective of the study is to asses honey marketing, patterns and effective determinantsapiculture farming in SehalaSeyemtWoreda. Beekeeping is a long-standing practice in the study area and appears as ancient history of the country as a whole. A cross sectional study, in which households were purposively included and conducted in selected district to assess the current honey market patterns and determinants , production potentials and production constraints.For this study, four kebeles are purposely selected. Primary data are collected from a total of 115 respondents that are randomly and proportionately selected from the four kebeles. Focus group discussions and secondary data’s are also used to support analysis and interpretation of the primary data. Descriptive statistics are used as analytical tools. Results of the descriptive analyses showed that the traditional hive beekeeping practice is the dominant system accounting for about 90% of the household income and livelihood and practiced by the majority (over 77%) of the households. It is predominantly practiced by and defined as a men’s occupation and entirely depends on forest. The average productivity of the traditional hive was 8 kg/year. The average annual production and income earned per households from beekeeping is 168kg and 5996 ETB, respectively. The result indicated that bee keepers are receiving less income where as the intermediaries are benefiting better earning. This shows as there is marketing in efficiency in the study area. In the study area the level of honey channel, level of markets and market determinants of honey market have been identified. The level of honey market is indicated by its low level of honey extraction and processing, storage and transportation materials, means of transportation of honey to the market, flow of market information, honey transaction measurements etc are identified. The OLS regression result showed that about 97% of the variability in production is accounted for by the exogenous variables included in the model, and the coefficients of amount of put produced and total beehive size are positive and significant at 1% respectively whereas actual price, education level, beekeeping experience and sex of household are negative and significant at 5% and 3%, and 8% respectively. It could be concluded that increasing market price and level of education may not always necessarily have positive impact on honey production sold such as in the study context. In this context rather the asset owned by the household and economy of scale (size of colony) contributed to better involvement in honey production. Future intervention, thus, need to consider strategies to tackle such context specific factors influencing farmers involvement in alternative income generation activities.
