By PHILIPPA STEVENSON agricultural editor
Bay of Plenty beekeepers are confident the dark cloud of bee-killing varroa mites hanging over their industry will have a silver lining.
Waikato beekeepers, despondent after poor honey production last season, fear that up to 200 mostly hobbyist honey producers could be lost to the industry unless they get a better harvest next summer.
Apiarist Jane Lorimer said Waikato producers' woes were worsened by the impact of the varroa mite.
But Bay of Plenty beekeeper Nick Wallingford said not all of the industry was "so doom and gloom."
Although the projected cost of varroa to all New Zealand agriculture over 35 years could be $900 million, the impact varied across the country, he said, and affected beekeepers differently depending on where they operated..
Treating varroa would add costs to the beekeepers' operations "but it will ultimately provide a new, larger income stream in the form of increased opportunities for paid pollination services," Mr Wallingford said.
"Here in the Bay of Plenty, the beekeeping industry is characterised by beekeepers actively examining their current management practices to determine how they can best learn to cope with the mite intrusion - in just the same way that every beekeeping country in the world, except Australia, has had to do in the past."
In one effort in the region, beekeepers had combined to buy in bulk stainless steel mesh from which they were making new floors for their hives.
The mesh floors served two purposes: allowing mites, not attached to bees, to fall out of the hive and die; and, used in combination with a sticky board, for monitoring infestation rates.
"Rather than just treating holus-bolus, beekeepers here are already aware of the potential problems that would come from either pesticide resistance development, or from residue problems.
"So they are keen to develop varroa mite population modelling and sampling techniques to allow them to choose both the type of intervention and the timing," Mr Wallingford said.
He dismissed the possibility that rising costs of pollination would encourage industries to move to alternative methods.
Many techniques had been investigated over the years.
"Beekeepers welcome all sorts of pollination-related work, as most of it either highlights the failure and/or costs involved in artificial means or, at the least, supports the value of bee pollination."
Studies suggested that every beehive placed in a kiwifruit orchard pollinated about $10,000 worth of the export fruit.
"A pollination fee of $100 for the three weeks required means that this is a good investment, and cheap insurance for a grower. If pollination doesn't happen, or doesn't happen well, the crop will be smaller in size and total.
"To pay for good pollination just makes good sense," he said.
Similar calculations could be done for other crops, such as apples, and the accepted standard was that beekeeping generated 100 to 150 times more value to society than the industry's own goods and services, in NZ valued at $50 million.
Meanwhile, the Government-funded rural assistance coordinator, Murray Auld, said he had received only about six calls from concerned beekeepers since his appointment last October.
* The Beekeepers Association's annual meeting is in Queenstown this week.
Beekeeping New Zealand
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
Latest from Business
Downloads spike for app helping EV owners track road-user charges
The platform will soon launch a feature that automatically buys road-user charges.