New Zealand agriculture could lose more than $700 million a year if the honeybee population continues to decline, according to a new study into the economic consequences of a decline in pollination rates.
One of the co-authors of the study, Lincoln University Professor Stephen Wratten, from the Bio-Protection Research Centre, said it was well known that a global decline in insect pollinator populations posed a major threat to food and nutritional security.
"We've lost most of our wild bees in New Zealand to varroa mite, and cultivated bees are becoming resistant to varroa pesticides. Functioning beehives are becoming increasingly expensive for farmers to rent," he said.
"We know the decline in bee populations is going to have a major impact on our economy, but we wanted to measure the impact."
Previous methods of estimating the economic value of pollination had focused on desktop calculations around the value of crops and their dependence on pollinators.