Bee-keeping in Kenya has been practiced traditionally for many years. However, only 20% of the country’s honey production potential (estimated at 100,000 metric tonnes) has been tapped. 80% of Kenya consists of arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) which have high potential in the production of honey and apicultural activity is a major occupation in these areas due to the abundance of bee flora

Modern bee-keeping in Kenya started towards the end of the 1960s and has since become an important enterprise in the livestock sub-sector. 80% of the honey comes from the traditional log hive. However, a reasonable amount of hive products is obtained from Kenya Top Bar and Langstroth hives

How to attract bees to your hive

Description

Many products can be obtained which are great sources of income i.e. honey, beeswax, pollen, propolis, bee venom, royal jelly, bee colonies, bee brood, queen bees, and package bees. Encourages environmental conservation. Bees are good pollinators of plants, trees, fruits, and crops, thus playing a big role in bio-diversity and improvement of crop yields The therapeutic value of most hive products provides a remedy for a number of ailments (Apitherapy).

Key Benefits:

  • Bee farming is a rewarding and enjoyable occupation with many benefits. It has a number of advantages over other farm enterprises;
  • Requires little land (50 colonies require a ¼ acre ) which does not have to be fertile
  • Honey is a source of non-perishable food
  • Capital investment is low compared to other farm enterprises.
  • Bee-keeping or bee farming is cheap and relatively not competitive to other Agricultural enterprises i.e. does not compete for resources

Challenges

  • The farmers lack adequate skills on managing bees and handling hive products.
  • Inadequate training for both farmers and extension staff.Limited access to appropriate bee-keeping equipment.
  • An underdeveloped marketing system
  • Lack of adequate and intense research on of the existing bee-keeping technologies, equipment, honey bee and product utilisation.
  • Low prioritization of bee-keeping in relation to other enterprises in the wider Agricultural sector.

Conclusion

Information on the profitability and productivity of box hives is important to encourage beekeepers to adopt the technology. However, a comparative analysis of profitability and productivity of box and traditional hives is not adequately available. The study was carried out on 182 beekeepers using a cross-sectional survey and employing a random sampling technique.