Almonds go nuts with bees
There is a bee-boom humming along.
It is likely to be impeded by a substantial setback but it’s too soon to know how great, or when it might come.
The almond industry in Australia is going nuts and must have bees for pollination.
Without bees there is no crop, and the when-not-if arrival of the worst known honey bee parasite would drive up both almond and honey production costs.
Domestic opportunities for beekeepers are enormous but potentially onerous, simultaneously enhanced and complicated by growing demand for Australian export package bees to pollinate almonds in the United States.
Investors and producers are competitively coy about their expansion plans for the areas now planted to almond trees in the key region near the tri-State border, but it has grown into a multi-million dollar industry and almond pollination is developing to be the largest managed pollination event in Australia.
“Thousand of hectares have been planted to almonds and the demand for bees in the coming seasons is expected to be exponential,” Dr Doug Somerville, NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) apiarist at Goulburn said.
Dr Somerville and DPI colleague, research scientist Dr Michael Hornitzky, have just returned from a close look at a huge orchard in the Robinvale district, just over the Murray River in Victoria, west of Balranald.
Dr Somerville says an estimated 60,000 bee hives will be used this year for almond pollination and the industry will need another 20,000 next year.
However, there are a couple of impediments – a shortage of skilled labour for one, but more frighteningly, a tiny mite called Varroa destructor: Australia is its last frontier, the only major beekeeping country free of the pest, never eradicated anywhere once it gained a foothold.
In June, New Zealand’s South Island became the second last domino to fall, after which the government had abandoned eradication plans.
However, in late August, government and the industry agreed to make one last eradication attempt, now underway.
Failure would force New Zealand to then follow the universal experience - ongoing use of chemicals to control the mite population; hence higher production costs.
“Whilst the opportunities are dynamic for Australian beekeepers now, most are resigned to the fact that Varroa is going to get here – it’s a matter of when, not if,” said Dr Hornitzky, based at Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute, Camden.
Wherever Varroa appears, it destroys all wild swarms; to ensure pollination thereafter, horticultural and agricultural enterprises have to pay commercial beekeepers.
To hedge against the mite, beekeepers, urged by the NSW Apiarists Association, are taking up simple, “sugar shaking” test kits being distributed free by DPI.
Other early detection programs include a national sentinel hive program; ship captains are being educated, baggage and incoming mail is being inspected, and sniffer dogs trained to detect bees are on the prowl.
With opportunity knocking, would a shortage of bees make entry to the industry more or less attractive? Will the profitability of beekeeping become marginal?
Whilst the industry is short of trained labour to work bees, clouded by the threat of Varroa, there is suddenly a surge in demand for beekeeping courses.
“In the medium to long term there would still be opportunities for surviving commercial beekeepers, but their services would come at a premium,” Dr Somerville said.
Contact: Dr Doug Somerville, Goulburn, (02) 4828 6619.