Beekeepers struggle to work with our disrupted climate

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 keeper of bees is becoming a hard thing to be, due to a drier than usual year.

North East Apiarist Association president, Elwyne Papworth, explained that a lack of rain this winter has put pressure on the Victorian beekeeping and honey industry.

She said local apiarists have this year been forced to go to greater lengths to keep their bees alive and reap a honey flow.

“It’s have a great effect on the productivity of the industry, producing andy (honey), but (also) keeping the bees alive,” she said.

This season marks the seventh consecutive year with a dearth of production.

Ms Papworth said the longer the period without sustained rain events, such as those experience this year, the more significant the flow-on effect to other areas of horticulture and agriculture.

“We’re very reliant on bees,” she said.

“It is very difficult.”

Seasons for apiarists have been getting progressively worse and worse, Ms Papworth said,

So serious has it become that the bigger beekeepers have begun to purchase packaged bees to make up the number.

Beekeepers are needing to travel longer distances to create ideal situations for their bees to be able to make honey to keep them alive.

“They’re trying to keep that insect alive, and keep people fed,” she said.

Ms Papworth, a beekeeper works from her property south of Echuca, where her operations are currently 60 per cent pollination and 40 per cent honey production.

“This season isn’t showing a great deal of potential,” she said.

In Victoria there are an estimated 80 full-time commercial beekeepers who are operating without assistance of another income, but this number is declining.

While beekeepers tend to be able to manage at least one honey flow, the apiarist has noticed more and more beekeepers resorting to artificial feeding.

In addition, apiarists are frequently forced to keep an amount of honey with the bees just to keep them alive through a poor season.

While typical journeys on the road with bees in search of ideals conditions are generally about five hours, they can last as long as nine hours through the night, Ms Papworth said, stopping along the way to let the bees fly.

The journeys have become longer in recent seasons, she said.

“Nature keeps changing (and so) we have to be as smart as nature,” she said.

(Today’s Shepparton News carries a story by reporter Thomas Moir about the pressure on beekeepers articulating another of the complications arising from climate change, but the idea that the trouble is directly related to Earth’s disrupted climate system is never mentioned. The beekeeper simply attributed the difficulties she and others in the industry were facing to the fact that “nature keeps changing”.)