Beeing friendly: How bees are helping improve biodiversity in Victoria

Mr Wootton along with his wife Eve Kantor run a high-input, high-output farming operation, Jigsaw Farms, between Hamilton and Cavendish.

In the last 12 months, the pair have planted 24,000 trees and shrubs, and have accommodated about 20 per cent of their planting this year to include bee-friendly varieties.

The cattle, sheep and wool operation spans 3400 hectares and turns off about 15,000 Merino lambs to supermarkets and wethers to feedlots per annum.

"We've done work around integrated pest management where we've tried to limit the amount of pesticides we use and if we do use them, we use them when the time is right," Mr Wootton said.

"We also want to protect what we call our good pests, the likes of bees, so we thought about ways we could enhance what we do to help the bees."

Since taking over the property in 1996, the pair have planted more than 600,000 trees, serving as shelter belts to protect their pasture and livestock.

"We're carbon neutral and we're focused on high-input and high-output goals so we produce a lot of wool, a lot of lamb and a lot of beef and we're double the district's stocking rate," he said.

Jigsaw Farms runs a dry sheep equivalent (DSE) of 22 head per hectare.

So the idea behind helping the ecosystem is in Mr Wootton and Ms Kantor's best interests.

"We're not almond farmers that have to have the bees to grow, but we think it's a useful thing to have around our farm," he said.

"We do a lot of shelter belts and we needed to look at what species we were putting in those belts."

The operation also sells between 200-250 steers annually and produces about 750 bales of fine to superfine wool each season.

Last month the pair planted 5000 pollinator-friendly trees thanks to a modest $5000 grant from Bee Friendly Farming and its partners through the Wheen Bee Foundation.

The Plant Trees for Pollinators program works with primary producers to help improve and promote bee health on their land, with up to $10,000 in tree grants offered to BFF-certified farms.

"We thought it was a good idea not only to have honey bees which may be introduced, but to also just attract native bees to our farm," Mr Wootton said.

"Bees are good for our clovers and sub-clovers and if you have more biodiversity, you will have a healthier landscape and if you have a healthier landscape, you have a healthier farm."

While the grant aided the cost of the project, he said it cost about $3 for each tubestock to be planted when factoring in the cost of the guard, so the cost of more than half-a-million trees does add up.

"But it's certainly worth it," he said.

"Most farmers are looking at ways to improve their farms and this is just one of the things we're doing to improve our operation."

The benefits of having an abundance of bees around your property are endless, according to Wheen Bee Foundation chief executive Fiona Chambers.

Ms Chambers said grants were available for primary producers to plant trees greater than two metres that were Indigenous to the region and provided nectar or pollen rewards.

"It's very, very important to have bee-friendly trees," she said.

"With the bushfires a couple years ago we lost about 18 million hectares across Australia and so much of that was forests.

"Traditionally beekeepers would rely on those native forests for supporting their bees and the bees are really critical to food security."

The bee-friendly trees would also support and encourage pollinator health and diversity the bees around the plantation area.

"The bees support horticulture and agriculture so thinking strategically can encourage bees on farm and can improve your yields in your pollination-dependent crops and clovers in your pasture is a classic," she said.

In order to receive the grants, farmers will have to be BFF accredited.

"It is a fairly easy process to get accredited and it relates to having three per cent of your farm providing floral resources, creating habitat for bees and other pollinators and making sure there is water available," Ms Chambers said.

Grants on offervalued between $500 and $10,000 are on offer and applications close on September 15 at 5pm.