LUX MONTIS Vol. 5 No. 2 July 2017 ENHANCING THE COMPETENCIES OF HONEY BEE FARMERS IN ANAMBRA STATE FOR POVERTY REDUCTION Nwankwo Clara Ukamaka (Ph.D) Faculty of Education, Department of Technology and Vocational Education Enugu State University f Science and Techology, Enugu e-mail:
[email protected] Phone No: 08035527504,08111363319 ABSTRACT Enhancing the competences of honey bee farmers in Anambra State for poverty reduction is an alert toencourage the honey bee farmers to go into bee production (apiculture) as a lucrative business that will reduce poverty. The study was carried out in Anambra State. The population for the study was 108 respondents comprising 83 extension officer and 25 bee farmers in Anambra State. No sampling was made because the population was manageable. A 29 item structured questionnaire on competencies needed was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts. Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.73. Mean with standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while t-test analysis was used for the test of the hypothesis formulated. It was found that the bee farmers possess fourteen (14) competencies examined in this study at low extent. The study also showed that the fifteen (15) ways of enhancing the competencies identified in the study were reliable enough to enhance bee farmers competencies investigated. More so, the finding regarding the null hypothesis revealed that the null hypothesis tested at 0.05 level of significance was not rejected. Therefore, bee farmers enhancement depend on the relevant and appropriate extension education adopted by extension officers in delivering the extension packages.