ESTIMATION OF EFFICIENCY DIFFERENTIALS IN HONEY BEE ENTERPRISES: IMPLICATIONS FOR HIGHER PRODUCTIVITY IN KEBBI AND KWARA STATES OF NIGERIA

The total honey produced in Nigeria is usually inadequate, not documented and the country only meets the domestic consumption partly from the public based farm, local farmers and mostly import from other countries.This paper examines the Technical Efficiency (TE) gaps between traditional and modern honey bee enterprise in Kwara and Kebbi States, Nigeria. The multistage sampling technique was employed in randomly selecting 80 beekeepers comprising 30 traditional beekeepers from each State and 20 modern beekeepers from both States. The main tools of analysis were descriptive and inferential statistics. Empirical result showed that the mean TE value for modern production system was about 0.84 compared to traditional unit with 0.59. This is an indication that on the average, the bee farmers were operating TE of 0.16 and 0.41 below the frontier for modern and traditional systems respectively. TE coefficients of number of hives (0.29); adjusted hired labour (0.21) and number of baits (0.08) in modern bee farming and traditional bee farming adjusted family labour and number of baits coefficients (-0.05; 0.43) shown that these variables increased TE. A positive mean difference of about ₦6,752 in income was realized among bee farms that adopt new bee farm equipments. The demand-supply gap of honey products could be bridged and sustainable increased output could be achieved if farmers adopt a new techniques and improved their technically efficiency as ample opportunity still exist to move closer to frontier.