Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Adjournment

Bee sites

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (19:00): (1300) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Environment, and the action I seek is to provide confirmation that bee sites on public land will continue into the future. I have been contacted by a number of beekeepers, apiarists, from around the state, who are deeply concerned that Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action staff are telling them that bee sites will be cancelled on public land in the future. Of course we know that our national parks, our state parks, all of those wonderful land reserves that we have in rural and regional Victoria, provide some of the best homes for the blossoms that our bees rely on to make amazing honey. I would recommend that anybody who buys honey just skips the supermarket aisles; you do not really know what you are getting when you are buying honey from a supermarket shelf. Go to your local farmers market or go to your local beekeeper and buy some of their honey, because it is a taste sensation. It will taste like no honey you have ever enjoyed before, and you will be supporting a local Victorian beekeeper – supporting Victorian farmers, which is fabulous.

We know there are a lot of areas of public land which have been impacted by flood or by fire. Certainly in my electorate of Lowan the Grampians were heavily impacted by bushfire over the entirety of the summer. There were a huge number of bee boxes that were lost over that fire experience. That has had an impact, and not just on local beekeepers that lost their hives over that time. We have also lost an enormous amount of forest – the blossoms that would support beekeepers and give them somewhere to keep their bees alive. Pollen is not just there to provide a basis for honey and to provide delicious, sweet, good preserves. What is it? It is not a preserve –

Richard Riordan: It is, sort of.

Emma KEALY: Yes, a preserve, a concept, for our toast. We love our honey on our toast in the morning. My daughter Ella certainly loves her –

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

Emma KEALY: It is a spread. I will correct the record. Thank you very much, Minister. It is something that we all appreciate. I love a honey crackle. I do love a honey crackle. But what is most important is that this is actually food for bees. We need places for our bees to access pollen because that is food for our bees. So I ask the minister to confirm that those bee sites on our public lands will continue into the future. It would provide great support to our Victorian beekeepers, who do a fabulous job.