APICULTURE COMPETENCIES NEEDED AMONG AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE TEACHERS IN POST BASIC PUBLIC SECONDARY EDUCATION IN BAYELSA STATE

The study examines apiculture competencies needed among agricultural science teachers in Post Basic Public Secondary Education in Bayelsa State. The objectives of the study were to examine the competencies in queen rearing management, beehive management, and colony management in apiculture needed among male and female agricultural science teachers in Post Basic Public secondary education in Bayelsa State. Three research questions were stated. Descriptive survey design was used to carry out this study and 274 agriculture science teachers in all the nine (9) Educational Zones of Bayelsa State is used as population for the study. No sampling was done due to the small size of the population; the entire 274 agricultural science teachers were used composing of 208 male and 67 female teachers in the nine (9) educational Zones of Bayelsa state. The instrument for the data collected was a structured questionnaire containing 56 items. The statistical method used for data analysis was mean and standard deviation. The findings of the study showed that queen rearing management, beehive management, and colony management are competencies in apiculture needed among male and female agricultural science teachers in Post Basic Public secondary education in Bayelsa State. It was recommended among others that the needed competencies identified by this study be packaged and used to retrain teachers of Agriculture in order to make them meet the training needs of their students and adequately motivate their interest in the farming profession.   

Keywords: Apiculture, Competencies, Agricultural Science, Post Basic Education