Socio-economic analysis of beekeeping and the effects of beehive types on honey production

Turkey has considerable potential in beekeeping with her rich flora, proper ecological conditions and existence of colony. However, Turkish beekeeping sector has not yet utilized the rich natural resources sufficiently. Turkey is one of the most important honey producer countries. In Turkey, 200,000 agricultural organizations have activities in apiculture but, only 20,000 of these organizations deal with apiculture as their main source of income. Apiculture sector in Turkey still is faced with some important problems with respect to high chemical use in the hives, marketing and export problems caused by quality of honey, mix harvest and so on. The aim of this research was to analyze apiaries’ technical and economic aspects in Turkey. The total numbers of surveyed apiaries in Bursa province of Turkey were 80 in 2008 production period. Bursa province has high quality honey production and the highest quality pollen production in Turkey. First of all, technical and economic aspects of beekeepers are given under three sub-groups by the number of colonies (50 ≥, 51 - 100, and 101 ≤). One of the principal factors is use for the old types of beehive. In this paper, the effect of old and new type beehive use for the honey production in Turkey was examined. A time series data between 1936 and 2005 was used in analyzing ARD model.   Key words: Beekeeping, socio-economic analyses, time series, ARD model.