Media Release

Meet young Banjo Ward, at seven years old one of the youngest players in a critical enviro industry that developer Villawood Properties is looking to help safeguard into the future.

Villawood gives away 1kg tubs of honey from Banjo’s family business, tagged Possum Park, to highlight the crucial pollinator role honeybees play in everything from biodiversity and healthy ecosystems to agriculture, food production and the global economy.

Banjo’s Pa, Anthony Lines, of Lines MultiAg, is helping Villawood South Australia give away honey to clients and associates with tubs from his family’s beekeeping operations.

It’s a new South Australian arm to a national operation which sees Villawood give out some 2000 tubs of honey a year, up to now sourced from land donated by the developer to the Greater Bendigo National Park in Victoria.

The SA honey program ties in with a similar but larger biodiversity offset program which has seen Villawood give 1000ha to the Warrenben Conservation Park with another 600ha being processed at present.

This equates with two blocks donated for every one block Villawood sells.

The Warrenben land donation assists the Northern and Yorke Peninsula Landscape Board’s ambitious Marna Banggara project looking to return locally extinct species and reinvigorate the bushland’s health.

The critically endangered mallee whipbird lives in Warrenben. Other species protected in Warrenben include the endangered Goldsack’s leek-orchid, the malleefowl and bush-stone curlew.

Anthony Lines hopes Villawood’s honey gifts might also highlight a serious problem facing the beekeeping industry – the destructive varroa mite, which has been decimating bee populations across the country and savaging agricultural and horticultural businesses.

“It’s certainly challenging for farmers trying to grow beans, for instance, and almond orchards in particular, with our main pollinator under threat,” he says.

“The infestation started a couple of years ago in Newcastle port from overseas and it’s going through Australia.

“It’s only just got into South Australia and we are just starting to feel the full impact to the industry.

“Right now, the almond industry has imported around 10,000 hives to the Riverland of South Australia, that have been brought across from WA to pollinate the orchards.

“Hopefully, this honey will help highlight the issue. Many people don’t realise just important bees are to the world.”

 

Bees are an essential component of everything from biodiversity and healthy ecosystems to agriculture, food production and the economy.

They deliver enormous ecological, social and economic value to billions of people. Little surprise EarthWatch has declared the bee the world’s most valuable species.

For Villawood, bees are emblematic of its vision to create new neighbourhoods and townships where environmental stewardship, self-sustaining energy and strong social connections build vital and resilient communities.