Sweet and sour: Honey bees face uncertain future

Bees are an important industry in Australia, but the hurdles facing beekeepers are getting bigger, with climate change with just one of the problems starting to surface.

By CLAIRE SCHNACKENBERG

Bob Owen runs a beekeeping supplies business out of his garage at his home in Eltham and has been keeping bees for more than 10 years.

Through his time  as a university lecturer, writing for The Age and caring for his hives, he's closely followed the lives of honey bees.

Drought and heatwaves in recent years had badly affected honey production in Victoria, he said.

“Three years ago it was quite wet, so there was a huge amount of honey coming out and very strong colonies then, and typically a beehive, three years ago would produce about 80kg of honey. Last year with the drought on, it probably produced about 15kg of honey, and this year is looking around the same,” Mr Owen said.

“With these heatwaves the nectar dries up and with no nectar we have no honey.”

Honey production is big business in Australia with the industry producing an estimated $85-$95 million  worth a year. According to Plant Health Australia, pollination services from honey bees contribute a further $4-$6 billion a year to the Australian economy.

There are an estimated 10,500 beekeepers and 550,000 hives in this country, producing 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes of honey a year. The 2014 Plant health Australia report said Australia was one of the world's major exporters, with honey being sent to 38 countries.

But with less nectar available to bees in the current climate, the price of honey has already risen. Mr Owen estimated a small increase of about 40 cents a litre over the past two years, but warned that the price could continue to rise.

He said disease, climate change and cheap international products were the three greatest threats to Australian honey production.

“Something like varroa [a parasite] will come in, Chinese and Indian markets will get their act together and get a quality product, and that together with climate change  may mean the end of honey producing. It could just turn into a hobby,” he said.

China is a major importer of Australian honey and an increase in domestic production there could pose a threat to Australian exports. Quality issues have plagued Chinese honey in the past, but Mr Owen said a high quality export from China or India could be closer than people thought.

Bees feel the heat from climate change

Mr Owen’s beekeeping supplies store, Bob’s Beekeeping, is the last of its kind from Melbourne to Sydney.

“We get people coming up from Gippsland, from Adelaide. I get to meet a lot of interesting people with this job,” he said.

Long stretches of hot and dry years may be responsible for knocking some professional bee keepers out of honey production.

Senior apiary inspector Joe Riordan from the Department of Environment and Primary Industries said the change in average temperature over summer would have serious long-term effects, with the biggest impact on honey production coming from climate change.

“It’s a combination – it’s not just the heatwaves, it’s not just the hotter summers, it’s not just drought. Even the measures we take to tackle it, how we try to stop it, could have effects down the line we don’t even know about,” he said.

Unnecessary burn-offs, he said, could have effects on vegetation that could change the face of  forests and scrubland.

“These burns are really affecting the trees that regrow there. The yellow box and the red gum, which work well with these fires, are taking over where other eucalypts have no chance to reproduce,” he said.

The warmer conditions have also changed the flowering patterns of a lot of eucalypts, leaving professional beekeepers guessing at what trees will flower and when.

As a result, Mr Owen said, 60 per cent of the cost of beekeeping now went on petrol.

“It’s a complete guess what’s going to flower next. They don’t know what to do, so they are moving their hives places where nothing happens. They’re just sitting there, then they move them somewhere else,” he said.

Every year in northeastern Victoria beekeepers from all over Australia truck their hives down for the almond pollination season.

Usually around July and August, beekeepers rent out their hives to almond growers to help pollinate the plants.

President of the Australian Queen Bee Breeders Association Trevor Weatherhead explained  it was an easy way to make up income with honey levels dropping.

“Usually if they’re going down to northwest Victoria they’ll send about half to three-quarters of their bees and the rest stay at home to cook up the honey,” he said.

The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting an el nino for this spring/summer, a weather pattern that typically brings  dryer and warmer-than-usual weather to southeastern Australia, heralding another hard year for beekeepers.

Mr Weatherhead said commercial beekeepers were hoping the predictions were wrong.

“This could really be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for some, especially because some regions have had bad spells. Victoria I know has had two bad years,” he said.

Macquarie University Prof Lesley Hughes studies the effects of climate change on plant-insect interactions.

“There’s definitely been a change in flowering patterns. Lots of trees are flowering earlier or not at all, which is concerning,” Prof Hughes said.

Pests such as the varroa mite are a potential problem. While not present in Australia,  the mite has killed the majority of feral bee colonies in New Zealand in recent years, giving commercial bees less competition to collect honey, but also posing a threat to their colonies.

Mr Owen said having more locally reared queens was the key key to solving the problems facing honey bees.

“One of the things that Australia really has to come to terms with is rearing queens in certain climates,” he said.

“There has to be a move towards rearing queens locally who can suit different conditions.”