Factors affecting quantity and quality of honey produced by small scale bee farmers in Arapai sub county Soroti district.

Abstract

The study was conducted in Arapai Sub county Soroti disirict in order to analyze the factors influencing quality with quantity of honey produced by smell scale bee farmers. 60 bee farmers were purposively selected in four different parishes of the sub county, Data was collected using structured questionnaires, observations and interviews with the help of research assistants for language interpretation to the illiterates. Secondary sources of data were also reviewed. The results of the study revealed that bee keeping was dominated by male (71.1%) who were also married (86.7%). Furthermore, most of the small scale bee farmers were literate, kept bees mainly for income generation and had less than 1 acre on which they set the apiary for the safety of the neighbouring environment. Local beehive usage was higher than modern beehives since they were cheaper as compared to modern hives and most of the respondents (70%) owned few of them, with low colonization rate which greatly affected the quantity of honey produced Also, majority of the respondents rarely carried out inspection of the hives accompanied by a general low trend of record keeping as farmers tend to rely on memory records rather than written records, Majority of the small scale bee farmers (48.3%) harvested honey only twice per year of which most of them (61.7%) did not use smokers. Also most of the respondents (60%) harvested low quantity (0-5kg) of honey per year. Additionally, most of the bee farmers (38%) sold non processed honey which the few did by pressing (86.4%) and using jerry cans and buckets as packaging materials. The bee farmers financed their projects 0.8%) evert though some received support from NGOs like SOCADIDO. The main constraint of bee production was-pests and diseases followed by the prolonged drought and the majority burnt the hives in case of an outbreak; thus leaving such hives destroyed. Conclusively, level of education, marital status, experience in beekeeping, type of bee hive owned and record keeping were non-significant (P>0.1) to the topic studied, while sex of the respondents, size of land, number of bee hives number of hives colonised, inspection of hives, frequency of harvesting, use of smoker, honey processing source of financial support, pests and diseases were significant (P <0.1), implying that a unit increase in any of these independent variables had an effect on quality and quantity of honey produced. The study results therefore call for trainings in order to enable the farmers to learn modern methods on how to control and prevent the common pests and diseases. Also beekeeping industry in Uganda calls for committed men and women who are business minded to work with all the stakeholders along the value chain to bring about production of honey with high quality and quantity.