Native pollinators need more support than honeybees in Australia – here’s why
- Written by: Graham H. Pyke, Honorary Professor in School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University
Late last year, the New South Wales government announced an additional A$9.5 million in funding to support honeybee keepers in the wake of the 2022 arrival and subsequent spread of the Varroa mite.
Varroa mites attack honeybee larvae, reducing and even destroying entire colonies. This impacts honey production and the crop pollination services provided by honeybees.
However, the honeybee is not native to Australia. It’s an introduced species that has routinely escaped hives and gone feral, negatively impacting our native animals and biodiversity in general.
The new funding follows $58.4 million already spent by the NSW government in relation to the Varroa mite. It’s part of an ongoing trend of millions being spent on this exotic bee and pollination services to exotic crops, while largely neglecting the native plant-pollinator interactions that existed prior to European colonisation.
While some government and non-government funding is starting to look into alternative pollinators, thousands of Australian bee species and other native pollinators don’t enjoy nearly the same support as European honeybees. Native biodiversity is on the brink – but there’s work we can do to stop this.
The pollination crisis down under
Australia’s native pollinators include about 2,000 species of bees and many thousands of species of other insect pollinators. These include beetles, flies, wasps, butterflies and moths, as well as many of our bird and mammal species.
The biggest problem all these native pollinators face stems from our ignorance. Since the 1990s, the global decline of pollinators due to human activities, climate change and diseases has been a serious concern, especially in Europe and North America.
In Australasia this pollination crisis has been largely neglected, making it seem as if we’d dodged the bullet. However, our research shows the negative factors affecting pollinators elsewhere are just as present here.
The honeybee is so good at invading and proliferating in Australian landscapes, we now have some of the highest reported densities of feral honeybees in the world.
It’s likely honeybees adversely impact native pollinators and pollinator networks, because they compete for shared floral resources. The evidence available to date is consistent with this.
For example, recent studies have shown that native bees, when exposed to high honeybee densities, have fewer offspring and produce more males than females, which can lead to population declines.
The super-generalist honeybee can also harm our native pollination networks by facilitating the pollination of noxious weeds. It’s also likely native plants are receiving less pollination because honeybees have caused a decline in native pollinators.
However, it’s difficult to collect such evidence. It requires careful, time-consuming research. This difficulty has been compounded by an almost complete lack of funding for research on the impact of honeybees on native bees, and on Australia’s biodiversity.
An opportunity for native pollinators
The recent arrival of the Varroa mite provides an excellent opportunity to find out how Australia’s native pollinator systems will change in the wake of projected feral honeybee declines.
Governments around the country should urgently fund research on native pollinators. There are likely several hundred unnamed and thus unknown native bees in Australia. We need studies that identify them so we can learn more and protect them. Just recently one of us, Kit Prendergast, described a new species of native bee that visits a critically endangered plant. This research was not funded by any government.
Most importantly, as the Varroa mite is likely to continue spreading, it will significantly thin out the numbers of feral honeybees. This might be temporary as new feral honeybees escape from hives and replace them.
Still, it provides an opportunity for before-and-after studies, to understand the impacts of introduced honeybees on our native flora, fauna and ecosystems.
We have a narrow window to find out if native pollinators can recover after a temporary drop in feral honey bee densities. The time to carry out such studies is now, before the Varroa mite becomes ubiquitous.
Time for a new strategy
Ultimately, honeybees are not at risk of extinction. Despite the global pollinator decline, honeybees haven’t disappeared anywhere in the world, even in countries with far fewer resources than Australia. Nor has any plant species gone extinct from a lack of honeybees.
In contrast, there is overseas evidence of plant population declines due to the presence of honeybees and lack of native pollinators. In Australia, honeybees are so dominant and visit such a huge range of native plant species, they likely have extensive negative impacts.
We and a consortium of scientists are, without any current funding, developing a unique and much-needed Native Bee and Pollinator Conservation Strategy for Australia.
It will provide a clear, scientific evidence-based approach to safeguarding Australia’s unique pollinators and plants, and will provide practical and policy guidance to address the native pollinator crisis in Australia.
At present, protected areas in Australia are not selected based on their conservation value to pollinating insects. Of the three native bee species that are listed with being threatened with extinction on the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, none has a recovery plan.
There’s also general agreement feral animals shouldn’t be allowed in national parks. However, there are currently many licenced beekeeping sites on public land, including national parks and nature reserves.
It’s time for Australia’s governments to step up and invest in Australia’s native pollinators and the plants that rely upon their services, rather than pouring millions into the honeybee – a feral invasive species that jeopardises native wildlife. We implore them to do so.
Authors: Graham H. Pyke, Honorary Professor in School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University
