Last Sundays Landline program 27th October was interesting and about pollination of the Almond trees in Victoria that are needing hives as far away as SE Queensland. Good to see the ABC promoting bee keeping and the plight of the honey bee. Who would guess that the biggest almond orchard in the world is now being planted in Australia, it wasn’t that long ago that we imported almonds and now exporting them.
Next Sundays program is also about bees and I;m sure it is worth watching.
The program can be watched off the ABC WWW site. Even send them an email thanking them for the story and promoting bee keeping as an industry.
Cheers
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Yes Peter I enjoyed the program.
But there is a dark side to almonds. Each nut takes about 4 litres of water per year to be produced. The almond industry in Australia uses much, much more water than cotton and and any other agricultural product. I read somewhere where almonds in California account for 10% of all the water consumed in agriculture. With our planet drying up, almonds is something we don’t want to be planting. Well that’s my thinking.
Was a good story though, emphasising the importance bees to agriculture.
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That is really amazing Wilfred and another something know. I’m always learning something every day. Australia being the driest continent on Earth humans haven’t learnt to take care of it.
Thanks for that info mate
Cheers
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It was a great program, Trevor Monson is a bit of character and is always upbeat about the industry, I have never met anyone who is as passionate about bees and agriculture as he is. This year I got the chance to visit the almonds with a commercial beekeeper and was astounded at the size of the place. There is some seriously big money being made on the almonds but there is a lot of other agriculture too, walnuts, melons, grapes and citrus. One of the good things to come out of the pollination is the health of the honey bees, apiarists cannot drop their bees off and hope for the best, they must be in good shape and free of disease which sets the apiarists up to go on for the rest of season with strong healthy bees.
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I thought it was an excellent program Rodderick and showed a side of bee keeping that even a lot of bee keepers didn’t know about. A very well presented program so I’m looking forward to next Sundays segment about bees. Good on OUR ABC.
Cheers
Watched it the other night. Very interesting indeed. Off to find myself 1000 hives…
For those interested, it can be watched here:
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Interesting busso, i have an almond and I never water it. The bees love it so do the 28’s. 
Hi @skeggley, what are 28’s? I know 28 spot ladybirds. They make a mess of potato plants, if given a chance, real pests.
Hiya Jeff, its the Australian Ringneck There are 4 sub-species one of which is the 28 Parrot. The 28 Parrot is named for its tripled noted call, more mellow than sharply ringing. It is confined to heavier forests of the southwest of Western Australia, such as the Jarrah and Marri forest.
They have more than their share of fruit from the trees here, I don’t mind with them being natives and all. They are starting to have to compete with those beautiful but screachy declared pest rainbow lorikeets that can strip a tree in no time.
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