Explaining the Pattern of Risks in the Beekeeping Farms in Iran

The productivity of honeybee production in Iran is lower than that of the world average ofthis industry. This situation is the consequences of several factors causing production damages in the beekeeping farms. As such, specifying damaging factors and determining the role of these factors in causing damages as well as differentiating management factors from the other ones are very important. Given that, the present study tries to specify factors affecting probability of occurring damages and factors causing deseases in honey producing farms,using a system of recursive logit. The data used in this study is from a sampleof726 farms collected from 8 provinces including, East Azarbayjan, Mazandaran, Esfehan, Tehran, Lorestan, Razavi Khorasan, khozestan and Boshehr. Results indicate that from pest group Varroa distructor, Wax moth and AkarapisWoodi, from diseases group, American foul brood, and from disaster factors, drought, robbery and extreme negative temperature have positive and significant effect on the probability of occurring damages in the beekeeping farms.Classifying the damaging factors into two management and weather condition factors revealed that 41.97 percent of probability of occurring damages comes from the first group, while 38.64 percent are caused by the second group. Consequently, the role of management factors is very crucial in occurring damages in the honey producing farms in Iran. Given that, one can conclude that there is a good potential for increasing productivity inhoney producing farms in Iran by increasing level of knowledge of the present producers, giving production license to producers with approved knowledge, and extending production farms just in the regions most appropriate for beekeeping in Iran.