Honeybee Production and Marketing Systems, Constraints - IPMS ...

promotion of hive products. This is one of the most significant developments within the subsector.In the study areas, honey producers largely sell their honey in the nearest local market (71.7%).Producers take their honey product to the market places carrying the produce by themselves(73.1%). As the quantity of honey to be sold on a specific market day by each producer was notso large, and market places are usually at a distance of 5 to 10km, other means of transport wasnot required. Yet, 19.3% of farmers reported that they use donkeys to take their honey to marketplaces when they have large production (e.g., greater than 20 kg). A sale of honey on road-sideor on farm or at home was not significant (only 2.5% of the sample farmers did). The honeyprocessed by the primary cooperatives was partly sold to honey processors in Addis Ababa inbulk containers and partly to local consumers/passengers and neighboring markets.As honey is a cash crop, most of what farmers produce was brought to market. About 98.3% ofthe sample farmers in Bure district reported that they sell what they produce and 1.7% does notsell at all. On average, sample farmers in Bure sell 84.5% of their total harvested honey.Therefore, honey is more commercialized in the district.The Market for honey is generally not well developed in Bure district mainly due to limitednumber of buyers relative to the number of producers (suppliers). For instance, the major buyersof honey in Bure were local collectors/retailers (27.5%), middlemen (21.7%), consumers(20.8%), tej brewers (10.8%), whole sellers (10%) and farmers' Honey Collection and MarketingCooperatives (9.2%). However, the local collectors (traders) and Kokeb union lack knowledge ofquality handling and business concepts (do not have sense of competition, poor in clienthandling, weak in information gathering, etc.). They also lacked facilities like proper containersand processing materials for the reason that the buyers were few, prices of honey were largelydetermined by the buyers.In the country as a whole and in study area in particular, collecting and selling of beeswax bybeekeepers was not known. So the marketing of beeswax starts from tej brewers, after thebeeswax is collected as a byproduct of tej production.72