The driest year in recorded history. That's how the weather bureau has labelled parts of South Australia in 2024. Many of the state's farmers dealt with drought conditions through last year and now beekeepers are predicting honey shortages are on the horizon.
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00:00This sugar syrup is not designed to make honey sweeter, instead it's keeping these bees alive.
00:09There's very very little water in the soil, so that means there's no nectar in the trees.
00:13With no nectar there'll be no honey and also the bees are starting to starve.
00:18Dry conditions across 2024 has forced many beekeepers to hand feed their hives.
00:24Last year was fabulous for bees because it was a bounty year.
00:28This year we've had less than half the amount of rain we should have done.
00:32Mark Rose has managed to survive the challenging year on existing stock.
00:37Honey-wise I can harvest around about a tonne of honey in a year.
00:41This year it's a couple of hundred kilos.
00:442024 saw the driest state in the continent experience record lows.
00:49Parts of South Australia recorded their lowest rainfall on record for 2024.
00:54Most of that was through southern parts of the state.
00:57The agricultural areas very much below average rainfall for the year
01:01with York Peninsula and the Mid North being lowest on record.
01:05The Weather Bureau says towns like Maitland, Port Vincent and Rubber Forest
01:09all recorded their lowest annual rainfalls.
01:12It's not news to some farmers.
01:14It was absolutely below average.
01:16We were still lucky to get rain especially through that winter period.
01:20We had half of what we normally get.
01:22Adelaide also had lower than average rainfall making it the driest capital in the country.
01:27The dry year that we saw last year really came down to a very dry autumn
01:32that we saw right across the state.
01:34Despite the dry conditions here in Adelaide it isn't parched everywhere.
01:38Moomba in the state's far north east had around three times more rainfall than normal.