Beekeeping

The chapter beekeeping deals with the following topics: honey bee species used for beekeeping, other types of gaining bee products including honey hunting and meliponiculture, hive types, bee hive manual of Deliverable 3.1 from Holeta Bee Research Center (Ethiopia), hive management (supplemental feeding, prevention of swarming, …), locally adapted hive management interventions (good beekeeping practice), biggest problems in beekeeping, status of migratory beekeeping, status of pollination business and beekeeping associations. Beekeeping or apiculture is the housing and maintaining of bees, mostly of the genus Apis, in hives. Not only the choice of the right honey bee race, but also the right hive-system and appropriate hive management contribute to successful and high profitable honey bee product yields. In this chapter honey bees that are used for beekeeping in the two target countries, as well as commonly used hive types and hive/colony management were assessed. In both target countries, the use of mostly traditional hive systems is common. In both countries the hive management plays a subordinate role, which means, that methods like supplementary feeding, requeening, swarm prevention or bee health management is not common in every region of the countries. Besides classical beekeeping, honey hunting and the use of stingless bees (meliponiculture) are widely practiced to gain bee products. The research results also indicated, that there is no nation-wide good beekeeping practice and no pollination business at all. There are few beekeeping associations and their structure differ from those of Europe. Constraints and problems regarding the beekeeping sector were also assessed resulting in a variety of problems, from lack of knowledge about bee biology to a lack of market or finance facilities.