Time of year again
It’s that time of year when the Pohutukawa trees are flowering again. And this year, the blooms are spectacular. I have trees that are visible both from my bedroom and this writing room and wow, they are certainly putting on a magnificent display. I remember just a fraction of the flowers last season, yet now, the trees are covered all over in their red splendour. A quick Google search reveals an abundant crop of flowers is linked to a fine summer. We always like rain up this way, so I am hoping it is not too fine.
And there is a myriad of bees as well, just as there were on the tea tree, flowering a week or so back. Even though the blooms are up in the tree, the movement of the hundreds of bees is evident, as they go about their pollination. I am so relieved about this as it was only 15 years ago that I wrote a story for the newspaper where I worked, about the lack of bees around. I was living in New Plymouth at the time and when I phoned experts to comment on the situation, I had one scientist from Hamilton saying ‘’you too’’ as it was something that was becoming noticeable up there as well. Without bees, our world would soon collapse. That story was the most read story that I wrote. We were able to view readership from papers around the country and the story stayed in the most viewed for almost a fortnight. People were concerned. There were plenty of theories at the time about the lack of bees, with some saying the cell phone towers were interfering with the bee’s signals, others blaming pesticides and still other’s, disease. I remember speaking to the then Minister of Agriculture, Jim Anderton, and he didn’t want a bar of it. The bees were perfectly fine in Christchurch. But that was not what the local beekeepers were saying.
Since that time, we have had an increase in the number of people keeping bees, both for the Manuka properties and for extra cropping, such as avocado trees. Where money is involved, so goes the attention. I am not sure of the status now, whether there is still the money in honey there once was but regardless, the number of bees out there pollinating my trees shows there are still plenty of the critters around.
I just carried out a quick Google search to see if I could find my old article, instead, several more recent ones came up from around the world. A 2020 article in The Guardian claimed a US study showed that the loss of bees was causing a decreased production of key food crops. The article stated that the lack of wild bees was caused by a loss of habitat, pesticides and climate crisis. Of seven crops grown in 13 states across America, five showed evidence that a lack of bees was hampering the amount of food that could be grown, including apples, blueberries and cherries.
I know my son, with his avocado orchard, doesn’t rely on wild bees, instead, he gets several hives in around pollination time, a costly exercise but one that works. He gets plenty of fruit.
I am not sure where the bees busily working on my Pohutukawa are coming from, but regardless, they are having a field day. We have plenty of paper wasps around here, which can be another reason for lack of bee numbers, but that certainly doesn’t seem to be a problem today. Whether these are wild bees or coming from someone’s hive, I am very grateful both for them and to the fact there are still plenty of them around.