Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 18 ISSUE 2
Written by Duygu SERT, Vecdi DEMIRCAN

This study focused on economic structure of different beekeeping farm sizes in Isparta province in Turkey. The main material of the study was comprised of original data acquired by way of survey method from 74 farms in Isparta province which carry out beekeeping activities. Neyman Method from among the stratified sampling methods was used for determining the number of samples that will be subject to surveys. Accordingly, the farms with 0-75 hives (31 farms) group I, farms with 76-150 hives (25 farms) were classified as the group II whereas farms with 151+ hives (18 farms) were classified as the group III. Gross production value per hive ranged from 254. to 271.54 USD and on average it was 267.32 USD. The share of honey sale was approximately 99% of the total gross production value. The lowest and the highest production cost per hive were 49.12 to 71.58 USD, respectively. The result showed that as the magnitude of farm size increased, production costs per hive declined. It means that bigger farms had advantages over small farms in terms of production costs per hive. It was determined that permanent labor and feeding costs played an influential role in total production costs. The proportion of permanent labor cost in total production cost for group I, group II, and group III was 42.36, 37.94, and 33.62 %, accordingly, and feeding costs comprised 32.01, 28.51 and 35.71 %, respectively, of total production cost. Gross profit per hive ranged from 180.21 to 240.42 USD and on average it was 235.77 USD. In addition, net profit per hive increased as farm size increased. Relative return is a criterion that measures the success of a commercial enterprise. Relative return for group I, group II and group III were 3.55, 4.96 and 5.48, respectively. Since the relative returns of all the farm groups were higher than 1 it can be concluded that all the farms were profitable in relative returns increased with the increase in farm size.

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