Honey bee deaths caused by approved pesticides deemed preventable

Andrew Stanish, Australian Bee Supplies, is as passionate as it gets when it comes to bees, but is concerned that continued use of some industry-approved pesticides is proving deadly to a large number of hives.

"Quite a few [chemical products] are coming across that are more bio-friendly, but the standard ones do present a lot of issues," Mr Stanish said.

"I think they should change the structure of the chemical so they aren't as deadly and it's not only deadly to bees, they're like the canary in the coal mine."

As more farmers are enlisting beekeepers to help with pollination, Mr Stanish said this was changing the mentality on how herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers were used, with many farmers seeing the benefits in changing to organic options to protect the bees.

Using a bee broker, a keeper will dictate the number of hives which are then transported to a farm in need of pollination, often almond, apple or blueberry farms in Victoria.

"There's a contract written up between the farmer and yourself, and the farmer knows if I bring good bees they'll have lots of good stock," Mr Stanish said.

He said often apple orchards used a chemical thinner that removed smaller flower buds, ensuring "bigger and more wonderful" fruit, but if this was done within 24 hours, the bees took poisoned pollen back to the hive, killing the entire colony.

"There's more people who when they do use Roundup and glyphosate weed killers, if they do it at night or outside of flowering season it's not a problem," he said.

The impact of La Nina has been damaging to the industry too and as a result, he said there was less honey.

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In previous years, over two and a half harvests, he collected 160 kilograms of honey per hive, equating to about 4 tonnes of honey overall, but over the last two years his yield was much lower.

"The rain is coming through and washes out the nectar, so there's not enough food coming in for them," he said.

Dependent on changing seasons, a queen bee will increase her egg production from 200 to 300 eggs, up to 1500 to 2000 a day as the weather warms heading into spring.

"If it's raining and there's no nectar, that's potentially 7000 bees that will be born four weeks later - all of a sudden they've got no food so they have to eat the food in their beehive," he said.

"The bees are effectively starving as well and under normal circumstances, the extra 7000 bees being born would go out and collect that stock."

Bee genetics are also key to ensuring an effective honey collection and Australian Bee Supplies provides everything for people to get started with their own beehive.

Having the right bee bloodline can ensure the docility of your hive, making it easier to collect honey and provide better honey production.

They can source bloodline queens with particular traits and milk male drones to mechanically inseminate the queens.

"Genetics of bees are very important, they call it mechanical insemination, which is effectively artificial insemination," he said.

"The queen then gets her little [figurative] certificate and badge of honour.

"Domestically she can last up to four years and commercially she'll last about two years."