Nectar Is Grazing: Forage, Pesticides and the Eucalyptus Conflict

#Seventy-five percent of your honey comes from a tree the state is clearing

Between 70 and 75 percent of South Africa's honey comes from eucalyptus — 70% by one account (GroundUp, Jan 2021), 75% by another (IOL, Oct 2021). Commercial beekeeping in this country was enabled by nineteenth-century gum planting.

Six eucalyptus species are listed as invasive under the biodiversity regulations, and government has spent three decades clearing them. That is the conflict — unresolved, and worth thinking hard about, because the regulations already contain a resolution most landowners have never heard of.

#A site carries hives the way a camp carries cattle

Everything you learned about grazing capacity applies here, with one substitution. Swap grass for nectar and the structure holds: a site has a nectar carrying capacity, and adding boxes does not create nectar. Ten hives on a site that feeds six do not produce ten hives' worth of honey. They produce six hives' worth, divided ten ways, against ten hives' worth of labour, equipment and theft exposure.

The difficulty is that you cannot walk out and look at it. You can assess veld condition on a camp; you cannot assess a nectar flow that runs several kilometres in every direction, across other people's land, and varies by an order of magnitude between seasons. You diagnose it after the fact, from your own records.

Careful — this one bites

Do not diagnose over-stocking from one bad year, and be careful with the number the industry quotes at you.

Allsopp & Cherry recorded Western Cape yields of 13.4 kg per hive, and that figure gets repeated as proof of forage over-stocking. Read the source and it gives two causes together: crowded forage and hives being managed to provide pollination services rather than honey (UCT CSSR WP 221). A hive doing orchard work in spring is not being run for honey and should not be judged as if it were.

The same survey's unweighted national average was about 25 kg per hive. The Southerns Beekeeping Association's warning is blunter still: the same site can give you 15 kg one season and nothing the next (Southerns).

Diagnose over-stocking only from a multi-season declining trend, on a stable site, under stable management. One number rarely has one cause — in veld or in nectar.

#The gum decision, tree by tree

Six Eucalyptus species are listed as invasive under the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act 10 of 2004 Alien and Invasive Species Regulations, published 1 August 2014 and in force from 1 October 2014: E. camaldulensis (river red gum), E. conferruminata (spider gum), E. cladocalyx (sugar gum), E. diversicolor (karri), E. grandis (saligna) and E. tereticornis (forest red gum) (SANBI).

There are about 85 introduced gum species in the country, and most of them are not listed. Beekeepers here favour several of the unlisted ones precisely because they flower at useful times — Corymbia ficifolia, E. paniculata, E. melliodora, E. sideroxylon, E. gomphocephala (SANBI infosheet).

So the first question is never "is it a gum". It is "which gum, and where is it standing".

The legal position

NEMBA 10 of 2004, Alien and Invasive Species Regulations. For the six listed eucalypts:

Automatic exemptions — no permit and no action required:

Land in the Nama-Karoo, Succulent Karoo or Desert biomes
Gums within cultivated land, at least 50 m from untransformed land
Gums within 50 m of the farm homestead
Urban trees with a trunk diameter over 400 mm measured at 1 000 mm height, as at 1 October 2014
Existing formal plantations

The override that beats every exemption above — these must be removed regardless:

All gums in riparian areas: within 32 m of a watercourse, or within the 1:100-year floodline, whichever is greater
All gums in Protected Areas
All gums in listed ecosystems

The route most landowners have never heard of: a stand of listed gums used as a plantation, woodlot, bee-forage area, wind-row or avenue can be retained by applying for a permit demarcating it Category 2, supported by a risk assessment report. Applications go to AISpermits@environment.gov.za (SANBI).

And when you sell the farm, a Declaration of Invasive Species is compulsory — the buyer inherits the liability and must be told.

One caution on currency. The current gazetted list is GN 1003 in Gazette 43726, and the research could not confirm each of the six species' present category on that list, nor whether GN 1003 has since been superseded. Check the gazetted list itself before you cut anything (DFFE).

Two contractors' stories will reach you and both are wrong. The first says every gum must go — SANBI names this specifically as something unscrupulous clearing operators tell landowners (SANBI). The second says keep every gum because bees need them, which walks you straight into an offence on the riparian strip.

#What the trees are actually worth

Eucalyptus cladocalyx sustains roughly 39 359 of the 50 780 managed colonies in the Western Cape through the hot, dry December-to-February dearth, when little else is flowering. Replacing that forage service was costed at about USD 7.5 million a year using artificial diet, or about USD 20.2 million a year through a fynbos cultivation and restoration programme (CSIR). The research could not establish which year those dollars are in, so read them as orders of magnitude rather than as a quotation you could take to a bank.

The colony-health model in the same study is the part a beekeeper should sit with. Hives go into deciduous-fruit pollination at 100% condition and decline through spring to about 40% by end-November. E. cladocalyx lifts them back to about 70% by January, and fynbos tops them up to a full hive by early July. Take the sugar gum away and substitute artificial diet, and the model restores only about 93% of the equivalent — meaning a colony probably cannot be used for pollination in two consecutive years.

That is the whole conflict in one sentence: an invasive tree is doing the work that keeps the pollination fleet alive.

Contested — here is both sides

Clear the gums. The six listed species consume water, displace indigenous vegetation, destabilise river banks and raise fire loads. Working for Water has cleared over a million hectares since 1995 precisely because the ecological and hydrological costs are large and cumulative, and every stand left standing seeds the next invasion (SANBI).

Keep the gums. Seventy to seventy-five percent of national honey production and a large share of the deciduous-fruit pollination fleet depend on them, and no artificial substitute fully restores colony health. Clearing them without replacement forage does not produce a neutral outcome — it produces fewer, weaker colonies servicing an orchard industry that is expanding (CSIR).

Where this actually lands. The regulations already encode a compromise — biome exemptions, distance exemptions, and the Category 2 demarcation permit for a bee-forage area. That permit is the practical resolution. But SANBI itself notes the conflict can undermine public support for clearing, and the permit does not answer what replaces this forage in fifty years. Note too that the CSIR paper describes E. cladocalyx as "not an officially declared invader", reflecting the pre-2014 lists — the same tree, two regulatory eras, in two sources you might read on the same afternoon.

#The neighbour with the sprayer

Forage you have secured can still be poisoned. The Registrar of the Fertilizers, Farm Feeds, Agricultural Remedies and Stock Remedies Act 36 of 1947 issued Guidelines on the management of the risk of Agricultural Remedies on insect pollinators in May 2017. Every beekeeper and every crop farmer should have read it once (full guideline).

Start with the label. It tells you the hazard band before you read a word of the guideline, and the bands are set by acute honeybee LD50:

Below 2 micrograms per bee — highly toxic. The label carries "Toxic to honey bees" and a hazard symbol.
Between 2 and 10.9 micrograms per bee — moderately toxic. The label carries "Dangerous to honey bees" and a symbol.
11 micrograms per bee or above — non-toxic. No statement.

Do this on the farm

If you are the crop farmer, these are duties, not courtesies.

Sowing treated seed:

Sow only when wind speed is 5 m/s or less.
Fully incorporate treated seed and dust into the soil.
Notify beekeepers with hives within 60 m at least 48 hours before you sow.

Foliar spraying: 4. Choose the least harmful registered product that will do the job. 5. Do not spray in daytime if the temperature within an hour after spraying is expected to exceed 12 °C. 6. Pollinators are generally active 07:00 to 16:00 — spray outside that window. 7. Mow flowering orchard floors just before spraying, so the bees are not working the weeds under the trees. 8. Use buffer zones against drift, avoid contaminating surface water bees drink from, and tell your contract applicator where the apiaries are. 9. Notify beekeepers with hives in or near the block at least 48 hours before a foliar application — the notice period applies to spraying, not only to seeding.

Under a pollination contract: foliar application of acutely toxic products during bloom is prohibited where contracted hives are on site, unless there is an emergency written agreement between beekeeper and farmer, forwarded to the Registrar.

The guideline also proposed measures on neonicotinoids — no aerial application, fruit-tree foliar use only after petal drop, and a prohibition on foliar use in cotton. Whether those proposals were gazetted, and the current registration status of specific products, could not be confirmed. Read the registered label; under Act 36 of 1947 the label is the law, and no course may hand you a dose, an active ingredient or a re-entry interval.

#Nobody has published your forage calendar

Here is an honest gap, and it is yours to fill. The research could not locate a published month-by-month bee-forage calendar for the Gauteng Highveld. The Western Cape has a well-documented one, because that is where the pollination money and the research attention are. For the summer-rainfall interior, the calendar has to be assembled from general phenology and local knowledge.

So build your own. Every fortnight, for two seasons, write down what is in flower within about three kilometres, what the bees are actually working, and what the hive weight is doing. Cross-check it with your provincial beekeeping association. That record beats any national average, because it identifies your dearth — roughly May to August on the Highveld, through frost and dormant veld. The months of scarcity, not the months of plenty, set how many boxes your farm can carry.

#What to do on Monday

Walk the gums with the four-box test and find out which of your stands are actually illegal, which are automatically safe, and which are worth a Category 2 demarcation application as a bee-forage area. Then start the fortnightly flowering record, because the number that decides your hive count is a dearth you have not measured yet. And phone the neighbour who plants and sprays nearest your apiary — before he needs to phone you.

#Check yourself

3 questions — answers explained as you go

1Your yields per hive have fallen for four consecutive seasons on the same site, with the same number of hives and the same management. What does that most likely tell you?
Why: Any single season can be ruined by weather, and the same site can give 15 kg one year and nothing the next. What weather cannot explain is a sustained downward trend under unchanged management. That is the nectar-carrying-capacity signal, and the exact analogue of falling production per animal on over-stocked veld.
2A stand of Eucalyptus camaldulensis runs along a stream on your farm, about 20 m from the water. It is your best February forage. What may you lawfully do?
Why: The Category 2 demarcation permit is the right tool for most stands you want to keep, but not this one. Gums within 32 m of a watercourse or inside the 1:100-year floodline, in Protected Areas, or in listed ecosystems must be removed regardless of any other exemption. The homestead and cultivated-land exemptions do not reach into the riparian strip.
3A neighbour intends to spray an acutely toxic registered insecticide on a flowering crop 40 m from your apiary. Under the Registrar's 2017 pollinator guideline, what is he required to do?
Why: The 48-hour notice applies to foliar spraying, not only to sowing treated seed, and it runs alongside the timing rules. He does not need your permission — unless your hives are there under a pollination contract, in which case acutely toxic foliar sprays during bloom are prohibited outright absent a written emergency agreement lodged with the Registrar.