One of my hobbies is beekeeping. It’s a simple pleasure for me. I get to contribute to the cycle of life of my neighbourhood ecosystem. I get the small satisfaction of practising a tiny bit of suburban agriculture. I get to watch tiny civilisations rise and fall. If the bees do well, I can usually get a bit of honey out of it, too.
My first beehive was in San Francisco. It did well enough for a few years, then died out sadly but conveniently a few months before we moved away. Since coming to New Zealand, I have been kicking around the idea of getting a hive, but never quite gathered enough momentum to get organised… until a few weeks ago when I bumped into a local beekeeper selling honey at the neighbourhood shops. I stopped to chat, and 20 minutes later walked away with his phone number and a promise to call him later this winter to order some bees.
Beekeeping is a little different in New Zealand than in San Francisco. Generally speaking, it’s more regulated. Unlike in the USA, beekeepers in NZ must register themselves with a nationwide agency; they must also register the locations of all their apiaries / beeyards. Unlike the USA, NZ has very strict biosecurity controls at the border, with considerable penalties for importing any bees, bee products, or beekeeping equipment. The biosecurity controls exist mostly to prevent the introduction of new bee diseases, because unlike in the USA, in NZ there are only five bee diseases: parasitic mite syndrome, American foulbrood, half moon syndrome, sacbrood, and chalkbrood.1
The most interesting beekeeping regulations are around the disease American foulbrood (AFB). After a large amount of government-funded AFB research by the Crown Research Institute Plant and Food Research, the New Zealand government has decided to try to completely eradicate AFB from NZ!2 As such, AFB has been designated as a “notifiable disease”: beekeepers must report any occurrence of AFB within 7 days of discovery, as well as destroy the infected hive.3 Beekeepers must also have their hives inspected annually for AFB by a beekeeper who has been certified in AFB recognition. Certification is a multi-year process involving a training course and a test. Once you’re certified, you can inspect your own hives.
Having just taken the certification course and test, my mind is full of thoughts on AFB. Overall, I’m impressed by the lofty goal of eradication, and by the pragmatic approach to getting there. As far as government programmes go, it seems to be well run and moderately successful. When the AFB programme began in 1990, 1.2% of NZ beehives were infected. That number has since declined and stabilised between 0.26 and 0.31% (source). The educational outreach is excellent; the legislation is sensible and involves minimal paperwork; the general attitude is to help beekeepers who report AFB in their hives rather than punishing or shaming them. I think stricter legislation is required to fully eradicate AFB, but the current legislation is certainly containing the situation for now.
Fingers crossed I passed the test. Either way, I’m looking forward to resuming beekeeping this spring :)
–
Footnotes:
Other diseases not present in NZ: rabies. This is one reason for the very long quarantine of dogs when they’re brought in to NZ. ↩
Anyone who’s played the board game Pandemic will delight in seeing the game mechanics translate into legislation. ↩
Hilariously, the official recommendation is to douse the infected hive with petrol to immediately kill the bees, then wait a little while before burning the hive. “There have been many close shaves with people burning petrol-soaked hives.” No shit! The examples of several close shaves were, in my opinion, the highlights of the AFB policy documents. Can you imagine the lawsuits if the USA recommended people to burn gasoline-soaked beehives? ↩