Socio-Economic Factors Influencing Adoption of Modern Bee Keeping Technologies in Baringo County, Kenya

Bee keeping improves livelihood of rural communities due to its low capital requirement, low technical knowhow and the fact that it is amenable to existing land use in the rural areas. The county is designated as Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) which is characterized by high incidence of drought, poor infrastructure, and high levels of poverty. The purpose of this study was to determine factors that affect the adoption of modern Bee Keeping Technology in Baringo County. The study specifically investigated, the levels of modern bee keeping technologies, challenges facing modern bee keeping farmers, the level of household income from bee keeping in comparison with other farm enterprises and socio-economic factors that influence the adoption of modern bee keeping technologies. The target population for this study was the entire population of households of Baringo County. The researcher adopted a combination of cluster, purposive and random sampling technique. The sample size was 294 bee keeping farmers. The questionnaires were used for gathering primary data. The data gathered was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency, means and percentages with the aid of SPSS. Bee keeping was practiced by (29.9 %) of the respondents and (70.1 %) farmers do not practice. The challenges facing Bee farmers were ranked in a descending order. The main challenges being lack of Bee keeping materials, extension support, lack of capital among other challenges. The income from bee keeping and other sources of farm enterprise indicated that the sale of cereals was ranked highest and the sale of bee products was ranked fourth. The results showed that the adopters mean age was smaller than the non adopters and negatively correlated with p= 0.010. From the logistic regression model on factors affecting adoption of modern bee keeping indicated that gender (=0.252, p=0.1), age (=0.017, p=0.05), family size (=1.656, p=0.05) and education (=0.446, p=0.01) were significant. Farm size and livestock as variables in the logistic model were not significant. The modern bee keeping farming contributes significantly to households income. The ministry of livestock development and fisheries and other development agencies working in the area should promote modern bee keeping by availing bee keeping materials such as smokers, protective gears, and train farmers on modern bee keeping practices to enable them improve their yields as part of the strategies to alleviate poverty.