Think about this for a moment: one out of every three mouthfuls of the food you eat depends on pollinators. Without bees, birds, flies – yes certain flies – and other amazing creatures, many of the vegetables and fruits you love would cease to exist. And let’s not forget coffee, chocolate, medicines, fabrics and other items we take for granted!
And bees, of course, do a lot of the heavy lifting.
World-wide there are over 20,000 species of bee, with Australia home to about 2,000 species of native bees. Pollination here depends largely on European honeybees, first introduced in this country in the early 1800s. Researchers are now actively investigating how native bees and other pollinators can assist in what is often described as ‘pollination services’.
European beehives not only produce honey and wax – they also provide pollination services to the agricultural industry. The value of that service was seen in late July this year, when the ABC reported on the South Australian almond growers buying 600 hives from Western Australia. These had to be trucked across the Nullarbor desert to boost pollination levels following the South Australian drought and a ban on imports from the eastern states due to outbreaks there of varroa mite.
Some growers rent hives directly from individual beekeepers for the brief pollination window of two to four weeks. Larger concerns might deal through a ‘pollination broker’ to organize hives to be trucked to their land at just the right time.
Growers can also establish their own hives though they will need to know how to maintain them, or else engage a beekeeper to do it for them.
Whatever option they choose, they need those pollinators!
The spotlight is increasingly focusing on European bees and their own impacts on native bees.
In an article in The Conversation, Drs James Dorey, Amy-Marie Gilpin, Katja Hogendoorn and Kit Prendergast warned of the alarming spread of ‘an invasive pest that is largely flying under the radar’. They were referring to feral colonies of European honeybees competing with native bees and animals for food and habitat.
The honeybees become feral when a managed hive produces a swarm that leaves in search of a new nest. The authors say that they have ‘successfully invaded most land-based ecosystems across Australia including woodlands, rainforest, mangrove-salt marsh, alpine and arid eco-systems’.
There they take large amounts of nectar and pollen that would otherwise feed native birds, mammals and insects including our native bees.
The authors note that their foraging can ‘alter seed production and reduce the genetic diversity of native plants while also pollinating weeds’. They can also harbour pests and diseases like the Varroa mite.
The extent of their colonization makes it difficult to eliminate the threat – whether through physical removal of their hives, by poison or traps to catch their swarms – all of which have been tried in limited areas. The authors conclude that we need to develop sustainable control measures as a priority.
Native stingless bees can provide another option as pollinators for some growers. The stingless bee pollination industry in eastern Australia is beginning to supply rented colonies for crops but according to The Conversation, more research is needed to understand the full potential. More research is needed to show how they can improve crops and whether transporting them to an area outside their natural habitat might affect the health of the colony.
As the article points out, there are also thousands of native pollinators including flies, wasps, butterflies and other insects.
‘We already know many of these are capable of pollinating our major crops, including almonds [and] some can be more effective crop pollinators than honeybees.
‘Most crops benefit from a variety of insect pollinators, not one single type. It’s financially and environmentally risky to rely on a single bee species for all our food production. Ideally, we need to build understanding of how to manage landscapes sustainably to support multiple pollinators.’
And that must include making room for our native stingless bees.
Article by Geraldine O'Brien