Canterbury Field Day - 21 November 1998

Page 1 - Allen McCaw and Steuart Ecroyd; Derek Newton's loader
Page 2 - Carl Thompson; Canterbury clover
Page 3 - Dougal Mackintosh; Frank Lindsay
Page 4 - John Burton (Ag Quarantine); Lin McKenzie, Don Bell and Trevor Weatherhead
Page 5 - John Syme and Hiab loader
Page 6 - Pony rides; lunch crowed
Page 7 - Queenrearing - and the bees take control...
Page 8 - Richard Bensemann and the PMS; Trevor Weatherhead and AQIS
Page 9 - Peter Bray, Trevor Weatherhead, Derek Newton; Peter Lyttle

Their current system of border surveillance is considered to intercept 90-95% of all honey products being brought in. New techniques such as X-Ray equipment contribute to this level.

Their goal for the future is to maintain their quarantine focus and not get swallowed up as a revenue generating venture. John indicated the hours were long and the shift work was terrible, but the staff were dedicated and gave our industry good service.

Trevor Weatherhead was an invited by the branch as a guest speaker from Australia. Trevor has had many years experience as a DPI (Dept of Primary Industries) office in Australia and now has a queen rearing operation in Queensland not far out of Ipswich.

Trevor was involved in the recent discovery of a colony of Apis cerana in Darwin. Apis cerana, or the Asian honey bee is the natural host of Varroa and as such, the find of this species on the mainland of Australia was a worrying event. However to date, no further finds have been made in spite of extensive searches being made with the help of the local media and even a short TV ad being produced to alert the public.

Trevor followed on to show slides of their monitoring program in Torres Strait where Apis cerana is only 35 klms away from getting on an island hopping route direct to the Aussie mainland. The rugged nature of many of these islands has led research into baiting and "beelining" techniques. Trevor also touched on planned responses to exotic bee diseases - right down to having appropriate press releases ready to go for just about any eventuality.

Their current AFB monitoring programme was touched on. Currently they plate out spore concentrations into 3 grades being 1+ (50% chance of visible symptoms of AFB) 2+ (80% chance) and 3+ (100% chance). Around 1% of hives show up with AFB. Trevor indicated that they had trailed OTC feeding to eradicate AFB and found that it always showed up again up to 15 months after feeding stopped. Another interesting point was the perception that OTC (or antibiotics in general) are likely to be banned within the next 5 years due to the growing resistance to their use by the consumer, particularly in the Pork and Poultry industries. He suggested that it would be a good idea for New Zealand to have some other treatment programme available should (when) EFB come here.

A number of producers were using Gamma radiation to sterilize beekeeping equipment. They had to strap 3 supers together and were charged A$28 for freight from Brisbane to Sydney and back including the treatment. Any combs with honey residues had to be put into special plastic bags. They did not use brood combs again.

They currently have a variety of levies for research, EU residue (.25 cents/kilo) and their new organisation (AHBIC) has an income of around A$300,000 (Australia has around 673,000 hives - Trevor thought this represented 90-95% of all hvies). Some are voluntary and some are levied by the packers with around 5 major packers taking a large proportion of the total honey crop.

Trevor was involved with imporation of bee stocks from other countries and their quarantine facility in Sydney was able to be used commercially with costs of A$5.00 per queen per day to bring queens in until they had progressed to a point where a graft could be taken from them. Australia has introduced beestock using this facility from Russia and Austria.

His indications were that Italians are the main stock used in Australia and Caucasians and Carniolans were mostly used to supply an export demand to Canada. He felt Australia didn't supply Italian stock to Canada as this was already being supplied from New Zealand and now also Hawaii.

A huge barbecue lunch was put on by the branch and filled a nice spot during which the sun managed to remove the odd jumper.

A pleasant stroll of a km to Geoff Bongard's cell raising yard followed with Geoff outlining his cell raising methods. John Syme did the manual work and adlibbed with Len Hunt also offering a slight variation of the same method. Most were impressed with the quiet nature of the regularly handled stock.

During the day, horse fancier Dougal Mackintosh kept the children amused to the point of excitement with a couple of very well behaved ponies. I was one of a number of very thankful parents for Dougal's thoughtfulness.

The trade displays were excellent as ever with lots of gear on show. The loaders came out late in the day with Derek Newton showing off his Billet loader, an elbow style rear mounted boom loader, followed by John Syme with his Hiab.

The day finally rounded out with a few drinks over the bar of the rugby club rooms and industry politics getting the usual hammering.