Cadeia produtiva da apicultura em uma cidade do Vale do Sabugy.

Abstract

Beekeeping is currently an important agricultural activity in Brazil, representing work and income for many families of small and medium-sized rural producers. Of the products obtained from the hive, honey is the most important, being the main objective of Brazilian apiculture. The beekeeping activity is of great importance for both the environment and for the generation of extra income, because it fits as a sustainable activity, which does not harm the environment becoming a conservative activity. Within the production chain, the economic requirement is met because it generates income for farmers, the social requirement because it uses family labor in the field, thus reducing the rural exodus, and, finally, the ecological requirement because bees are not deforested. The objective is to map the productive chain of beekeeping in a city in the Sabugy Valley, Paraíba, Brazil: a case study, to analyze the importance of beekeeping in the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions in the interior of Paraíba, and to discuss the benefits of apiculture to beekeepers in the Sabugy Region, Paraíba, Brazil. The interest in approaching the theme was due to the fact of understanding about the alternatives of the beekeepers in developing with the creation and its developments for their communities as well as their family sustenance. Bibliographic and documental research of these works carried out in this city. They chose beekeeping as an alternative of survival, once this region punished by the drought, once they were regions that financially survived through the cotton, with fall of these productions with the culture of the cotton, they looked for another way and they found exactly in beekeeping, for not presenting high expenses and management.