Bee Pollination Management Assignment 2022

Bee Pollination Management 1
POLLINATION MNAGEMENT IN HORTICULTURE
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Bee Pollination Management 2
Pollination Management in Horticulture in Tasmania
Introduction
Agriculture has been identified as a major economic activity in Tasmania with over one
third of its land being utilised for various agricultural activities. Tasmania being an island, it has
been isolated from the major mainland industrial activities thus maintain its clean environmental
and atmospheric conditions. The clean environmental conditions together with factors such as
the availability of fertile soil, quality water and the favourable climatic conditions with four
seasons has enabled the state to produce very high quality agricultural products. Horticulture,
livestock and wool production contributes a considerable amount of revenue to the Tasmania’s
economy (Haberle 2014).
Horticulture involves the cultivation of vegetables, fruits and flowers for food and other
purposes such as decorations and beauty. Tasmania uses thousands of hectares of its land in the
growing of flowers, fruits and vegetables represented majorly by pyrethrum, apples and carrots
respectively. Pollination is a very important factor in horticulture and it can be facilitated through
wind or insects such as bees. Wind facilitates most of pollinations in crops and flowers but it is
important to note that the use of insects is considered especially where quality is the main aspect
in the production especially in high value horticulture.
This paper therefore looks at the insect pollination, insect pollination in horticulture, the
pollination management and challenges in insect pollination and the best practices in pollination
management in horticulture.
Insect Pollination
There are specific orders of insects that are known to provide pollination services to
horticultural crops including Hymenoptra (wasps and bees), Dipera, Coleoptera and Lepidoptera.

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The orders consists of the bees, flies, butterflies and beetles respectively. Among the insects,
bees belonging to the family Apoidea are the widely known to be best in pollination of crops
(Mader et al. 2012).The insects undertake pollinations through deliberate collection of pollen
from plants in the process of finding food for their young ones. In Tasmania and Australia at
large, bees are the major pollinators’ .The bee keeping industry in Australia dates back the early
years of 1831 when European bees were introduced into the region. Also available are the Italian
bees which were introduced in 1884. Honey and beeswax are the major products of the industry
but the bee keepers are now providing pollination services to the horticultural industry. The
leatherwood contributes about sixty five percent of the produced honey in Tasmania (Tasmanian
Beekeeper’s Association 2019).The honey bee industry has since expanded and currently valued
at about fifteen million dollars with an excess of over two hundred million when the extended to
the pollination and horticulture industry.
Bee keepers are always divided into different categories depending on the levels of
production. According to statistics by the Tasmanian Beekeeper’s Association, there were a total
of 254 registered beekeepers with 17655 bee hives in Tasmania. Traditionally, beekeeping is
mostly practiced in the public land in the forests and the experience passed from one generation
to the other. This means that the activity is sometimes regarded as a cultural activity and a hobby
among the beekeepers. This means that the government has to allow the farmers to continue
using the public land for keeping the bees in the leatherwood. The report by the Tasmanian
Farmers and Graziers Association (TFGA) shows that the limit of access to the public
land by the government of the state can highly reduce the beekeeping capacity and the general
production of honey and the pollination services (TFGA 2014).

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It is however important to note that the state government has some regulations on the industry
regarding the use of public land for bee keeping. The law requires that the beekeeping must be
practiced at a distance of twenty five metres away from the street, building or a road and must be
at four meters of the connecting boundaries (ABLIS 2019).In addition, the bee keeping activities
is increasingly spreading into urban areas leading to the creation of standards of practice by
various associations. The Southern Tasmania also provides the code of practice that governs the
standards for keeping bees in the area. This aims at providing minimum standards for quality,
uniform legislation references during complains and enhancing the public confidence of the
public in bee keeping as far as safety is concerned (Southern Beekeepers Association Inc 2014).
Pollination in Horticulture
Bees are the only insects that are employed in high level horticulture including honey and
wild bees. Honey bees are known to be best insect in the provision of pollination services in the
horticulture and agriculture as a whole. Pollination is very essential to the survival of both
animals and plants therefore the ecological maintenance. Also, the commercialization of flower,
vegetables and fruit farming requires the need for pollination for higher yields and quality.
Various studies carried out in countries such as the UK has shown that bee pollinations led to
higher yields by about 54% since the years of 1980s (Breeze 2016).
It is also believed that about 35% of the crops in the world depend on bee pollinations with crops
such as Almonds depending completely on bee pollination for fertilization during flowering
periods (Klein 2017).It is however worth noting that the crop dependence on the bee pollination
by crops significantly varies with the classification described as either essential, great, moderate
or little (American Beekeeping Federation 2018).