Nah Bill never been that sartorially elegant, were you there?
Max the 100,000 was just for Almonds.
What is more scary, if I were a grower is the demand from other crops.
So the figures for current plantings and proposed (almost certain to be planted) are as follows.
Blueberry 11,000 Ha @ 8 per Ha 88,000
Avocado 3,800 Ha @ 4 per Ha 15,200
Macadamia 2,200 Ha @ 4 per Ha 8,800
Almonds 50,000 Ha @ 6 per Ha 300,000
These are figures just for QLD, NSW and VIC.
SA has another 15,000 Ha of Almonds going in but that was excluded because they can't cross the border.
So in summary they need 412,000 hives just to pollinate the crops in the ground or going in and a total hive population of 416,000. The problem being that most of that hive population is apiaries of 50 or less.
What is interesting is the total number of hives and the % that have 50 or more
QLD 104,000 20%
NSW 214,000 41%
VIC 98,000 19%
Those are total numbers of hives registered and as can be seen there is a large number of smaller beeks with less than 50 hives and they are not going to cart their hives anywhere.
And when Varroa arrives ,as it will, you can cut that population in half.
It is going to take a lot of people from both sides of the fence especially the growers to realise that their livelihoods depend on bees and that research money and a decent return needs to be paid to the pollinator.
What I found strange or maybe not given they are Govt figures, the latest figures for hive count was from 2014 and they "think" the numbers are about the same!
Anyway I have probably bored you to sleep with the numbers.
Today got to a balmy 16 felt like 9 with 20kts blowing, got the fire going tonight to warm up so nice and cosy.