Beekeeping in Australia is a commercial industry with around 12,000 registered beekeepers owning over 520,000 hives by 2013-2014.[1] Most are to be found in the eastern mainland states of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Beekeepers or apiarists, and their bees, produce honey, beeswax, package bees, queen bee pollen, royal jelly and provide pollination services for fruit…
I clearly remember the first scary time I stuck my hand into the screened cage holding my first hive of 10,000 honeybees. Like most people, my reflexive response is to give bees and other summer stingers a wide berth. Up…
The Australian honey bee industry has long recognised the ideal of minimising any impact of their activities on the greater environment. The formalising of a set of national best practice guidelines for beekeeping in the Australian environment demonstrates to the…
There’s no denying it: we’re in a long-term relationship… with bees. Recent evidence published in the journal Nature shows that humans have been depending on honey bees for about 9,000 years. Researchers conducted chemical analyses of over 6,000 fragments of pottery revealing…