Evaluation of Transitional and Modern bee hives for honey production in mid Rift Valley of Ethiopia By: Taye Beyene Cairo, Egypt, September,2015 Presentation out lines Introduction  Materials and method  Results and discussion  Conclussion  Recommendation  Introduction Beekeeping plays great role in diversifying farmers’  income especially for resource poor farmers (Nuru,2002) Ethiopia is the leading honey producer in Africa and  one of the ten top honey producing countries in the world (Ayalew,1990) Having wide climatic and edaphic variability  It is home to some of the most diverse flora and  fauna in Africa Surplus nectar and pollen source to foraging bee  colonies Help for the existence of more than 12 million bee  ) colonies in the country (Gezahegn, 2001 Con’t... has the potential to produce about 500,000 tones of honey  per year and 50,000 tones of beeswax annually, but currently production is limited to 43,000 tones of honey and 3,000 tones of beeswax (MOARD, 2008) In Ethiopia in generally and in mid rift valley of Oromia in  particular, beekeeping has been practiced since an old age But the role of this subsector in diversifying income of  farmers is very low Con’t... Despite the favorable agro-ecology for honey production  and the number of bee colonies the country is endowed with, the level of honey production and productivity in the country is remain low One of the prominent factors for this low honey  productivity is the predominance utilization of traditional hives and poor bee management practice According to the study of Tesfaye Kebede and Tesfaye  lemma 2007 , about 98% beekeepers’ in mid rift valley of Oromia, Ethiopia still using traditional bee hive for honey production Which is very low both in quantity and quality (<5kg/hive)  Con’t... Thus the importance of this study to evaluate the  productivity performance of Transitional and Modern bee hives in mid rift valley of Ethiopia in order to promote improved bee hives with improved management practices Materials and Methods Conducted in Adami Tulu and Arsi Negele districts of mid  rift valley of Ethiopia AdamiTulu situated at: Latitude of 7° 19' N to 7° 40' N and ’35 38° 30' E to 38°  53 'E An altitude from 1500 to 2000 m. a. s. l  Arsi Negele situated at: latitude of 7o09’ N to 7o41 N and 38o25’ E to 38o54’ E  An altitude ranges 1500 to 2300 m. a. s. l  Treatments T1=Bee colonies with Transitional hives  T2=Bee colonies with Modern bee hives  T3=Bee colonies with Traditional hives (control)  Every treatment replicated three times  Modern hive Kenya top-bar Traditional hive Farmers and site selection procedure Farmers and sites were selected based on:  beekeepers experience and interest  Potentiality area for beekeeping  abundance of honey bee colonies in area  availability of common bee forage  accessibility of the areas to transportation service  Farmers Research Group (FRG) approach followed Theoretical and practical  training was given for a total of 30 beekeepers, bee experts and DAs at experimental sites After training, the farmers  were organized as Farmers’ Research Group (FRG) to perform all research activities together One transitional bee hive  was constructed at each experimental site in mass during the training session and demonstrated to all participants