Western Australia has the world's largest collection of wildflowers, with more than 12,000 species bursting into bloom each year, but as the seasons become dryer that number has declined.
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00:00In the sandy soils of the Yanship National Park, Anton Esterhausen and his son are on
00:07the hunt for flowers.
00:09The native bushland on Western Australia's central coast would normally be bursting with
00:13springtime blooms.
00:14It's very dry, but this one is coming.
00:18But after four years of increasingly dry winters, only a handful of the plants are starting
00:23to bud.
00:24Definitely less flowers, WAF also had less rain, very hot summer and probably that's
00:30what the after effect which we see now.
00:33Each season, the migratory beekeepers bring their hives down from the warmer blooms in
00:37the state's north in time for the springtime flowers.
00:41But this year, they've delayed moving their hives and are relying on the dwindling winter
00:45honey flows.
00:47Liz Barber is an academic at the University of Western Australia and CEO of WA-based bee
00:52research centre, Y-Trace.
00:55She says even plants that have flowered are showing signs of stress.
00:59You can almost pick the species by the flowering event.
01:02It's been so definite with the flowering that's actually been happening, but it's been dry
01:06flowering.
01:07There's actually been no nectar or pollen in a lot of that flowering.
01:11But there is research underway to protect bee populations and it's taking place on farms
01:16by growing high pollen clovers and legumes into pastures that provide an alternative
01:20to native flowers.
01:22Now that we know we've actually got a really bad year, or most likely got a bad year coming
01:27ahead, you can actually plant it now and you can have flowering, you know, through to at
01:32least through to December.
01:34Beekeeping has been Anton Esterhausen's passion for decades.
01:38He'd like to pass the business on to his son and for him a solution can't come soon enough.
01:44If you see on social media equipment that's for sale, I think people are exiting the industry
01:49and I think there may be some more.
01:51A budding solution to an environmental problem.