Abstract

The agricultural commercialisation of honey in Abia State, Nigeria was evaluated in this study. Primary data were obtained using a well-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to examine socio-economic and institutional characteristics of honey producers and constraints associated with honey production while Household Commercialisation Index (HCI) was used to determine level of honey commercialisation in the study area. The result of the socioeconomic and institutional characteristics showed that majority of honey producers were male. Furthermore, 58% have been in the honey business for more than five years with 57% practicing modern type of bee keeping and also, about 80% of the respondents produced honey at medium and large-scale levels. The result of HCI showed that majority of the households were in high Commercialised household (which have sold about 67% of their total honey outputs) followed by medium Commercialised household (have sold about 30% of their total honey outputs. The result also shows a mean commercialisation index of 0.646970. This implies that there is a high level of orientation of bee farmers towards commercialisation in the study area. The major constraints affecting bee farmerís production include pest and predators (89.70%), lack of access to credit facilities (85%), lack access to bee keeping equipment (85%), fire outbreak/bush burning (82.16%) and theft (74.43%). It is recommended that policies geared toward modern bee farming/production that requires techniques and equipment to enhance honey yield should be encouraged by government and non-governmental agencies while bee farmers associations should organise training/workshops to create awareness on negative effects of bush burning especially during dry season on honey production.

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