Honeybees: The Year's Most Prominent Guests: An Examination of Contemporary Apiaries in Sokoto State, Nigeria

Abstract

Honey is one of the products with huge benefits to mankind for medication and, a source of income and also serves as a food in many parts of the world, however, they had been affected by many pests. Therefore, the present research aimed to identify the honeybees’ visitors to modern apiaries in Sokoto State, Nigeria. A mixed design methodology involving experimental and ethnographic research methods was employed for the study, samples were collected using snowball purposive sampling techniques were employed, meanwhile 30 hives were used as a sample size from Madorawa, Kware and Duhuwa Locations. The hives were divided into two to detect the level of occurrences of the visitors to the colony. Both the hives were given proper inspection every two weeks to detect the condition of the colonies. The data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and Chi-Square was used to identify significant association at P < 0.05. The results indicate that, the total pest frequency in the study area is 574, Duhuwa had the highest percentage (39.89%), significant associations of 0.002 and 0.000 were observed between the frequency of the pest at Madorawa and More sites respectively. In conclusion, it was observed that three (3) different classes of pests namely insects, mammals, and reptiles were the visitors of honeybees in modern apiaries of Sokoto State, therefore, it was recommended that, appropriate control and preventive measures should be considered for better production of honey in the study area.