Abstract
The study was undertaken to assess technical efficiency of improved apiculture on poverty
status of bee farmers in Abuja Nigeria. A purposive sampling technique was used to select
140 bee farmers from three area councils of FCT namely, Abaji, Bwari and Kwaliin. The
data were analysed using descriptive statistics, stochastic frontier, Pearson correlation
and Foster-Greer Thorbecke (FGT) models. Result revealed that the average household
size was 6 and about 63% of the bee farmers had a secondary education, indicating that
they are largely literates. Also, about 63% of the bee farmers had contact with extension
agents. The poverty head count index was estimated to be 0.33 and 0.54 for the bee
farmers with and without improved apiculture practices. The estimated coefficients of the
parameters of production function, beehive, labour and land size, were positive and
significant at p<0.01 level of probability. The estimated result of the inefficiency model
indicated that there was a negative relationship between bee farmers’ household head
age (p<0.01), household size (p<0.05), bee farming experience (p<0.05), membership of
cooperative (p<0.01) and marginally extension contacts (p<0.10) and their technical
inefficiency. It is recommended that bee farmers should strive to improve on their current
level of technical efficiency by a magnitude of 19%to attain increase (frontier) output and
reduce cost. Beekeeping farmers should leverage beekeeping association as an avenue to
access finance, inputs, technical information and market.
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