Bayburt İlinde Arıcılık Faaliyeti Yapan İşletmelerin Mevcut Durumu

Abstract

As part of the evaluation of beekeeping activities in Bayburt province, a survey was conducted with 202 beekeepers engaged in beekeeping across the region. After completing the survey, the collected data were categorized based on the size of the businesses, and contingency tables were created. Accordingly, enterprises with 0-20 hives were classified as the first group, those with 21-50 hives as the second group, and those with 51 or more hives as the third group. It was determined that 60.90% of the beekeepers who participated in the survey were between the ages of 15 and 45, half of them were high school/university graduates, the majority of them (91.60%) engaged in beekeeping as a supplementary income or hobby, and 71.30% of them used traditional methods without receiving any beekeeping education. 67.30% of the participants did not keep records, 79.70% preferred entirely wooden hives, 87.10% practiced stationary beekeeping, 68.80% did not breed queen bees, 55.20% used Caucasian bees, and 27.70% used Anatolian bees for production. It was also noted that 68.30% of the beekeepers kept their hives on their own land, while 23.80% used the village’s shared apiary, and 90.10% of the honey they produced was sold directly to consumers within the province. Furthermore, 85.10% of the payments were received in cash. It was also found that 61.40% of the producers were members of the beekeepers’ association, and 96.50% were not members of any cooperative. According to the participants, the reasons for preferring Bayburt honey were: 91.10% for the quality of the honey, 84.70% for its affordable price, and 85.10% for trust in the seller. The main challenges in marketing Bayburt honey were identified as the inability to sell honey at the desired time (78.20%), the inability to sell products at their fair value (90.10%), and the widespread presence of fake honey in the market (83.20%). Additionally, it was identified that 85.15% of the colonies were affected by brood disease, 85.64% by hedgehogs, 84.16% by wasps, 65.84% by bee-eaters, and 95.05% by bear attacks. To address these issues, beekeepers should be provided with practical beekeeping training on topics such as queen bee productio