Queensland Beekeepers Association Conferences 2025

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Coast.

so eerieepeer ee airport. Photo by K Fricke:

Just four days after the Advanced Varroa Workshop that followed the VAA conference in frosty Beechworth, the about twenty or so of us who are compelled to attend every state beekeeping conference found ourselves boarding flights once again, this time anticipating much warmer weather in Gold Coast, QLD.

The 121% annual Queensland Beekeepers Association began with formal AGM business. There are currently 10,000 beekeepers in QLD running 160,000 hives. Jacob Stevens has been QBA president for a number of years now, which he mentioned has been “at great cost to my family and business” and that he would decline to be nominated again. In light of this obvious burden a motion was later made and passed to allow the QBA board to hire a paid “president’s assistant.”

Additionally one of the branch representative positions (Wide Bay) had no ready volunteer, though eventually someone raised their hand for it.

A book launch was announced, “A History of Capilano Honey 1953- 2018,” by Don Keith following the company from its inception in 1953 by Tim and Bert Smith to it being sold to Hive and Wellness, a Chinese aligned consortium, in 2018.' I had always assumed “Capilano” was someone's Italian surname but it turns out to be the name of a place in Canada? where Tim Smith met his wife whilst returning from the war in 1944, Apparently the original indigenous word is Qiyeplensx”,? which certainly soundsa lot less like an Italian surname. As with the other conferences there were a variety of presentations on varroa, pollination and small hive beetle. A particularly worthwhile occurrence was a panel of case studies from varroa positive NSW. Jon Lockwood, Ben Laybutt and Daryl Brenton each presented about their operations and how they were affected by varroa, and then took questions from the floor. One reoccurring theme that came up here and had already been alluded to a few times during the conference is the fact that beekeepers more or less have to use off label slow release oxalic strips to stay on top of the mites. Many have expressed that only using the registered miticides, and following the label constraints is impossible or at best would result in back to back Bayvarol use which in actual fact is worse for the industry than the off label treatments.

A book launch was announced, "A History of Capilano Honey 1953-2018," by Don Keith following the company from its inception in 1953.

Another valuable panel with asimilar format consisted ofrepresentatives of horticultural industries, Queensland Fruit and Vegetables Growers, Australian Macadamia Society, and Berries Australia. They also made presentations and then took questions from the floor as a panel. Many of the questions they received pertained to concerns beekeepers had about pesticide exposure they’ve received on the respective crops.

I think all the appearances at state conventions of representatives of related industries have been very valuable.

ere 2 hi a oe S Some of the editor's hives near Bundaberg, January 2013.

Photo by K Fricke

Of particular interest to myself is an example of just how thin sometimes the barrier between what is known and assumed and what is perhaps a mis-assumption can be. Ben Oldroyd speaking about Small Hive Beetles, about which he is an expert, made an offhand comment that in their native range in South Africa he barely sees them. Certainly he is correct and saw what he saw, but I was shocked nonetheless because I myself seeing SHB in their native range in Guinea, Nigeria, and Ghana, observed that there were often hundreds of SHB crawling around when one lifted the lid, but the hive did fine (if a comb becomes detached from the topbars of the topbar hive and comes to rest on the bottom of the hive though that comb will be slimed out and possibly the hive if that was a relatively large proportion of the total comb).

I had assumed African bees had become tolerant of the SHB, that is, unharmed by large numbers, while Dr Oldroyd has assumed they are resistant, that is, Keeping the numbers down. What could explain this difference of observation? Well he was looking at SHB on Apis mellifera capensis in relatively temperate South Africa while I was looking at SHB on Apis mellifera adansonii in hot humid tropical sub-saharan Africa, so it could be the climate, the bee subspecies, as yet undetected differing subspecies of SHB, or perhaps SHB are not actually native to one of the two locations. Going forward I’m eager to more carefully document my SHB observations in Africa. In the evening there was of course the banquet. The other multiconference-attendees were in general agreement with me that this was probably the best food of the conferences thus far this year, though noted the spirit of revelry was a bit more subdued than NSW had been. This concludes the 2025 state conference season for me, and though SA and WA are both yet to occur, someone else will have to report on them.

Endnotes

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