Australian beekeepers are warning the horticultural industry that the devastation of the bee population due to excessive flooding will flow on to their industry as well.
According to the NSW’s Apiary Association, upward of 5,000 hives have been washed away and destroyed. Each hive probably held from 25,000 to 50,000 bees, which means the loss of bees can be anywhere from 125 to 250 million bees.
This is a disaster too staggering to even be able to process.
We referred to the flooding recently when we shared a story about some dedicated bee lovers who stayed up all night moving a few dozen bee colonies to higher ground as the waters kept rising that night.
Two weeks later, ongoing bee losses due to recent floods are huge. The scope of devastation defies words.
This 4:11-minute video by 7NEWS Australia shows some kind people saving some drowning cattle, but we are unable to find video footage yet about the bee and beehive loses.
Instead of telling this story here, we are linking to Australia’s ABC online news article so you can see the sad photos of what has happened to Australian beehives and millions of bees in Australia during this past few weeks.
One of the biggest questions is how this will affect humanity. Many crops will not be pollinated and the earth is saturated. The other question is how the Australian apiary industry will recover from such vast losses. Right now everyone is still scrambling, but soon enough these questions will be on the minds of many people.
The authorities have established a hotline to handle this matter and are asking people across NSW to report any bee boxes they might see floating on the water or washed up and clearly having been transported by floodwaters. They will also arrange for bee removal if the incident resulted in a swarm of bees escaping that are now present on your property. You will find the relevant phone information near the bottom of the attached article.
To read the article click here.