AAA Congress in Australia

Linda Manning

The 8th Asian Apicultural Association (AAA) Conference was held in Perth, Western Australia from 20-24 March 2006, and was hosted by the Western Australian beekeepers. 162 people from 19 countries attended the Conference, held in the grounds of the University of Western Australia.

The Conference included a welcome reception, three days of lectures, one day of technical tours, a bee venom therapy workshop, a conference dinner and book launch. Sixty-three papers were presented on pests and diseases, melliferous flora and pollination, bee biology, beekeeping technology and bee products.

Keynote speakers

Professor Marla Spivak from the University of Minnesota, USA gave a keynote address on The impact of the Varroa mite in the USA. She asked, "Are we winning the battle?" and discussed whether honeybees bred for hygienic behaviour would be the saviour of beekeeping for pollination and nectar collection. Professor Spivak explained how to test for hygienic behaviour in honeybees. She explained that bees bred for hygienic behaviour have great olfactory sensitivity to the odours associated with diseased brood, and remove such brood long before it reaches the infectious stage.

Keynote speaker, Professor Mandyam Srinivasan from the Australian National University, discussed his recent work on Smal! Brains, Smart Minds: vision, navigation and cognition in honeybees. He provided an insight into honeybee flight and how bees regulate their ground speed by holding constant the speed at which the image of the environment moves across the eye.

Professor Verma from Himachal Pradesh University in India discussed policies and programmes for revitalising the beekeeping industry in Asia.

The Australian and international beekeepers enjoyed visiting the honey houses, apiaries, a pollen drying and packing operation, and the Western Australian honey packer Wescobee Ltd.

Most delegates described the visit to Harry East's 96-hive apiary at Bindoon as the high point. Harry is one of the beekeepers who own and operate the ‘better bees breeding programme’. The bees were feeding on Eucalyptus wandoo and redgum Corymbia calophylia. The honeybees, Apis mellifera ligustica, are yellow in colour and placid, clinging to the frames when they were removed from the hive. Not one person was stung even though several hives were opened and frames removed and passed around, with people using their fingers to break open the cells to taste the honey.

Beekeeper John Davies and another participant in the ‘better bees breeding programme’, spoke about the 26 years that have contributed to the lines of superior breeding queens. Since 1992, the programme has been owned and managed by six prominent Western Australian beekeeping businesses. These beekeepers expect to harvest 150-200 kg of honey per colony per year from ‘better bees' stock. The bees were so quiet they were a pleasure to work with.

It should be noted that no antibiotics or drugs are used on bees in Western Australia, so hygienic behaviour is not masked by drug use. Beekeepers practise barrier management. where the same four boxes and frames are rotated within the same hives.

Alan Fewster and his son Kim, and David and Leilani Leyland opened their honey house and extraction operation to the delegates. The large commercial beekeeping business has modern honey handling facilities with stainless steel uncapping machines, horizontal radial extractors and facilities for handling honey in bulk, using forklifts. They are moving over to square plastic 1,000 litre containers and away from 200 litre steel drums. The Fewsters are large-scale beekeepers by Australian standards and own 1,800 hives. They practise migratory beekeeping, moving their apiaries from one honey flow to another. Their trucks are specially fitted with a loading gantry for picking up and placing hives.

They usually harvest 50-60 tonnes of Jarrah honey every second year. The nectar comes from Eucalyptus marginata known locally as Jarrah, and is the most sought after variety of honey in Western Australia. Jarrah honey has an extremely high antimicrobial reading and is a highly flavoured, nutritious honey. It is also used in wound dressings, as in the B-Naturals topical product.

The Leyland family own Bees Neez Apiaries and operate 400 hives. They are also migratory beekeepers and members of the ‘better bees' group. They harvest at least 200 kg of honey per colony per year.

Some delegates toured the Wescobee factory to look at bottling and packing. Wescobee is the largest honey packer in Western Australia, handling about 10% of Australia's honey, and were Gold Sponsors of the AAA Conference. Wescobee took the opportunity of the Conference to launch their new Jarrah honey they also use significant amounts of this honey in their B-Naturals medicated honey topical cream.

Australian PhD student, Julie Irish presented results showing honey was effective against a range of micro-organisms responsible for severe infections. She said that multi-resistant bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (Golden Staph) was particularly sensitive to honey. Honey also inhibits various members of the bacterial family Enterobacteriaceae, which is one of the most commonly implicated groups in wound infection, and also inhibited the growth of Propionibacterium acnes, anaerobic bacterium implicated in the pathogenesis of acne. Ms Irish found that Jarrah honey, Medihoney™ and a Leptospermum honey significantly reduced biofilm formation. Biofilms are bacterial or fungal species that adhere to surfaces such as teeth, medical implants, and catheters, forming a protective layer over cells and causing infections that are resistant to antimicrobial attack. She argued for the clinical use of honey as prophylaxis against biofilm formation, particularly for indwelling medical devices.

Western Australian beekeepers are extremely fortunate that the pollens of several of our native Eucalypts are both nutritious and tasty. The most sought after pollen for human consumption is the golden pollen from the Jarrah. Beekeepers prefer the nutritious pollen of the redgum Corymbia calophylla to build up their colonies during winter. Delegates visited Saxonbee Enterprises’ pollen drying and packing operation in the hills east of Perth.

The Conference was deemed a success and the 9th AAA Conference will be held in China in 2008.

APITHERAPY WORKSHOP

Dr Hirofumi Naito of the Kofu Honeybee Research Laboratory, and Director of the Japanese Apitherapy Association presented a short history of bee venom therapy in Japan. Although bee venom therapy is almost unknown in Australia, it is practised in Japan and has gained wide acceptance.

To obtain maximum effect from a minimum amount of bee venom, Dr Naito used tweezers to pull the stinger out of a bee's abdomen. He then demonstrated the ‘sting points’, which are related to the parasympathetic nervous system. The amount of venom injected is proportional to the amount of time the stinger is inserted into the body and the strength of the venom is related to the type of bee, the season, and the age of the bee.

Dr Naito used the sting and venom from the Apis mellifera ligustica bees in his demonstration. He demonstrated his technique on the head and shoulders of Professor Matsuo Matsuka of Tamagawa University in Japan. During and after the workshop several people were treated. Mr lwasiw from Aussie Apiaries was treated for back pain. At the end of the Workshop, several therapists showed their technique and all appeared to have their own way of stinging patients. The subjects seemed to enjoy the experience even though the body part where they were stung produced a reddened and raised welt around each sting. The Korean Beekeeping Association had several bee venom collector kits on display.

Enjoyed reading about bees in Australia? Next year's Apimondia Congress will take place in Melbourne, and offers another great chance to learn more about beekeeping in Australia. See What's on.