Birds Meet: The Bees

Birds in Backyards is thrilled to showcase a talk by Dr Amy-Marie Gilpin who speaks about the role of Australia’s bird pollinators and the competition they face with feral honeybees. Dr Amy-Marie Gilpin is a pollination ecologist and lecturer at Western Sydney University. Her research focuses on the ecology and conservation of invertebrate and vertebrate pollinators and the pollination function they provide. Her research also extends into understanding and assessing the impact of introduced honeybees on plants and pollinators within Australian ecosystems.
You can visit The Wheen Bee Foundation (www.wheenbeefo...) for pollinator resources for your area.

[@shelliedrysdale4088]

thank you! I just got around to watching this now. brilliant.

[@missapippin9020]

Was this a recent webinar. I usually get notifications and attend the webinars but I didn’t get this one. So interesting. Thank you very much

[@BIBYTV]

Yes this web seminar was on Monday the 29th of April.

[@jasonbates2977]

Honey Bees are actually mainly used for pollination in Australian Agriculture, with a huge amount of our food supply only being able to be pollinated by honey bees exclusively. Without them a lot of the food we eat would not be available and would not be in as high numbers, meaning less food available for us humans. Honey production is is actually more often than not a byproduct of the pollination service they provide to the agricultural industry. I think it’s important to highlight that if we want to provide food for everyone in this world and as Australians want to stop complaining about high grocery prices, we should never forget the importance of Honey Bees. Australia has been free of the Varroa Destructor mite up until last year or so and up until then, was the last continent free from the mite. It took only 3 years for the mite eradicate all feral honey bee colonies, after its incursion into New Zealand and I suspect it will take less then a decade throughout most Australia now that is here!! It won’t be in the too distant future where Honey Bees won’t a concern for our native wildlife.

[@LawrenceMclean]

This video just came up on my YT feed. I very much appreciate the information provided by the video.