Bees 'starving' for pollen as native flowers fail to bloom

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Western Australia has the world's largest collection of wildflowers, with more than 12,000 species bursting into bloom each year, but as the seasons become dryer that number has declined.

Transcript

00:00In the sandy soils of the Yanship National Park, Anton Esterhausen and his son are on

00:07the hunt for flowers.

00:09The native bushland on Western Australia's central coast would normally be bursting with

00:13springtime blooms.

00:14It's very dry, but this one is coming.

00:18But after four years of increasingly dry winters, only a handful of the plants are starting

00:23to bud.

00:24Definitely less flowers, WAF also had less rain, very hot summer and probably that's

00:30what the after effect which we see now.

00:33Each season, the migratory beekeepers bring their hives down from the warmer blooms in

00:37the state's north in time for the springtime flowers.

00:41But this year, they've delayed moving their hives and are relying on the dwindling winter

00:45honey flows.

00:47Liz Barber is an academic at the University of Western Australia and CEO of WA-based bee

00:52research centre, Y-Trace.

00:55She says even plants that have flowered are showing signs of stress.

00:59You can almost pick the species by the flowering event.

01:02It's been so definite with the flowering that's actually been happening, but it's been dry

01:06flowering.

01:07There's actually been no nectar or pollen in a lot of that flowering.

01:11But there is research underway to protect bee populations and it's taking place on farms

01:16by growing high pollen clovers and legumes into pastures that provide an alternative

01:20to native flowers.

01:22Now that we know we've actually got a really bad year, or most likely got a bad year coming

01:27ahead, you can actually plant it now and you can have flowering, you know, through to at

01:32least through to December.

01:34Beekeeping has been Anton Esterhausen's passion for decades.

01:38He'd like to pass the business on to his son and for him a solution can't come soon enough.

01:44If you see on social media equipment that's for sale, I think people are exiting the industry

01:49and I think there may be some more.

01:51A budding solution to an environmental problem.

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