Cape Town - The Western Cape Department of Agriculture’s strategy (announced in 2018) to ensure sustainability of the province’s bee population is not having the desired result, placing the province’s deciduous fruit industry at risk.
While the strategy made strides in some areas, Western Cape Bee Industry Association (WCBA) spokesperson Chris Nicklin said the Covid-19 pandemic slowed their progress tremendously. Nicklin said the primary objective of the 2018 plan was to ensure the long-term survival and sustainability of the unique honeybee subspecies, the Cape honeybee.
The bees play a critical role in the province’s ecology by ensuring biodiversity through their foraging activities and performing up to 90% of all pollination of food crops.
While many factors adversely affected the population, such as the reckless use of pesticides, urban encroachment, climate change, bee pests and diseases, the most urgent issue remains the rapidly dwindling forage (food supply) for the honeybees – a key concern in the 2018 plan.
Nicklin said the problem was of such magnitude that local bee-keepers required the support of government, and this had to come in the form of influence and policy changes.
“If we’re unable to stem this problem, bee-keeping will become non-viable in the Western Cape, placing the pollination of our food crops in great jeopardy,” said Nicklin.
To this end, tentative efforts were made to set up the Western Cape Bee Forage Working Group in a partnership between the Western Cape government, organised agriculture and WBCA but the group still needed to be formally launched.
From the Bee Industry Strategy (BIS) perspective, Department business planning and strategy director Dirk Troskie, said they assisted the industry in developing the strategy as well as an implementation plan.
The Hortgro Group is the representative body of the South African deciduous fruit industry.
It’s operational manager, Mariette Kotze, said: “As an industry we are investing in pollination research and integrated pest management forms the backbone of our crop protection programme (that includes production practices that protect bees).”