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.
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