Meet your trainers - Queensland

I was just 12 years old when I first became a beekeeper, and have been a bee tragic ever since. During my early career I worked for a range of commercial beekeepers, followed by a long career as a bee researcher, with a particular focus on bee breeding; my passion. I was on the ground when Varroa first got to Florida, when our work at the famous bee lab in Baton Rouge had to pivot away from stopping the killer (Africanized) bees coming in from Mexico, towards vanquishing the vampire mites that were spreading fast.

I’m honoured to have been awarded the Goodacre Award in 2018, and I know a few of you have a copy of my book Asian Honey Bees.

In 2020 I left my job as ‘professor of bees’ at Sydney Uni, and have retired to Bingil Bay in north Queensland. Today you’ll find me busy rehabilitating the rainforest, admiring the cassowaries, chairing the Honey Bee and Pollination Panel of Agrifutures, and editing the next edition of the Encyclopaedia of Animal Behavior, among other projects - including helping you learn about Varroa!

All the bees I’ve worked with across Thailand, South Africa, Mexico, and the USA have been infested by mites. Everywhere, bees and beekeepers have learned to live with them, and so will we here. Importantly, we have the advantage of being able to learn from overseas. I look forward to sharing practical insights and supporting our sector through the necessary changes.

As the years go by, I find myself increasingly drawn into the enchanting world of bees. Being a father of 2 young boys and having dedicated over 17 years to working as a social worker with families and teens, I treasure the moments I spend tending to my hives as rewarding downtime.

My admiration and fascination for honeybees deepened when I actively supported the campaign to eradicate the varroa mite in NSW in 2022. Since then, I've realized the importance of paying meticulous attention to our bees to truly appreciate their invaluable work.

These days, my personal focus has shifted towards the development of our acre property to make it more self-sustaining, with beekeeping as a cornerstone of our goals.

I look forward to supporting beekeepers around the state in our industry-wide adjustment to varroa.

I have lost count of the number of years that I have been doing my ‘Beekeeping Apprenticeship’. Bees captured my imagination as a student in a small country Primary school bee club, and that fascination led me to keeping, managing and operating a commercial beekeeping operation. Chasing that ‘next flow’; the rewards, challenges, and camaraderie of beekeeping are something we can all attest to - but the learning and making mistakes never stops.

Early on in life, I also understood the importance of education and studied to achieve a Bachelor of Technology Education. Working with all types of students to pass on knowledge and to help them achieve has been a highlight. Now here we are today, with my education and beekeeping journeys coming together in my role as a trainer within the Varroa Management programs.

Regardless of where each of us is in our beekeeping ‘apprenticeship’, knowledge and understanding of Varroa is our industry’s next major challenge. I look forward to drawing on my years as an educator and beekeeper to support you and our community.

As a beekeeper and a scientist, I fully appreciate the impact of honeybee pests and diseases, and the constant fight to suppress them. Having researched small hive beetle for over twenty years, I know the key to winning the battle is having a thorough understanding of the biology and life-cycle of the pest. That along with knowledge of the treatment options available is how we each become equipped with the right information to manage our beehives in the most economical and effective way available. Having worked with many of you before throughout my long career in this sector, I look forward to supporting our vital beekeeping community with the tools and knowledge to win the fight against the Varroa mite.

My beekeeping began in Scotland with a beginners’ course and one colony of honey bees. Years of study and exams followed as I became a commercial beekeeper. Pollination contracts for canola and field beans produced quantities of honey, and the year-end crop of heather honey was a premium product, often sold as cut comb. A year into my beekeeping we were hit with Varroa, so a new management strategy had to be learned. My studies for Master Beekeeper Certificate and Microscopy Certificate were sadly interrupted by my move to join my family in Australia. Today, I am able to bring a lot of hands-on experience to my new home, where I have lived since 2019. I am keen to support beekeepers to make the small but necessary changes to apiary management, so that we are all able to thrive as beekeepers, in the new Varroa era.

I was a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam when Varroa first arrived in the Netherlands in the late 1980s. Being obsessed with anything small and alive, I was quickly drawn to the mite, wanting to understand its biology and effect on honeybees. I guess that obsession never really left me, even after I moved to Australia to take up a position at the University of Sydney.

My many months of field work in places like Thailand, South Africa and (less exotic) the Netherlands, allowed me to remain ‘in touch’ with Varroa while working with honeybees. Now Varroa is knocking on our door, and I am ready for the mite - perhaps by the time you read this it has already arrived in Queensland. Whichever is the case, we’ve got the knowledge and resources together to learn to live with the mite. This workshop will be the beginning of learning a new way of keeping bees, and I look forward to supporting you through the necessary adjustments.

Coming from a farming background and spending my career in agriculture, I know all too well the damage that can come from ‘hitchhiker’ pests, plants, and diseases unintentionally coming into Australia. As sadly demonstrated many times in the past 50 years, once these hitchhikers arrive, they can be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to eradicate.

My career has focused on researching fertilisers and agricultural chemicals, and, most importantly, assisting farmers with use recommendations for the optimal management of pests along with productivity enhancement. One aspect of obtaining approval for the sale of these substances is an authentic understanding of its potential impact on European and native bees, as well as the presence of chemical residues or likelihood of chemical resistance within the pest itself. I’ve been fortunate for this work to take me around the world experiencing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques, and I look forward to sharing my insights and lessons learned with the beekeeping community.

An opportunity arose! Did I take it? Absolutely! A social visit with a neighbour checking their hive developed into a mutual sense of belonging in the bee keeping field. During the subsequent years, I’ve continued to develop my passion alongside growing my knowledge and experience keeping bees.

In my day job as a sign language interpreter, my role is to faithfully relay ‘meaning’ when absorbing context and knowledge into another language. Amazing how relevant those skills sometimes are when it comes to monitoring and caring for my bees, and of course also in this new role as one of the trainers sharing insights around our readiness for, and management of, Varroa.

When I bought my first two nucleus colonies 52 years ago, little did I realise the places this journey would take me, and the people I’d get to meet. My wife, Marion, and I ran a queen bee breeding operation for 24 years, supplying to beekeepers in Australia and internationally, and learned a lot of lessons along the way. It's been my privilege to pass my knowledge onto others in the beekeeping community over the years.

Being President of the Queensland Beekeepers Association for 4 years, Executive Director for AHBIC for 7 years, and also Chair of AHBIC for 2 years, has enabled me to develop relationships throughout the beekeeping community, both here in Australia and overseas, and hear first-hand the challenges being faced in different areas.

With a commitment to being of service to the sector, I’ve appreciated the opportunity to be part of the national level planning for the arrival of Varroa in Australia. This was done through both the Federal Council of Australian Apiarists Associations (FCAAA) and the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council (AHBIC), and means that I’m able to bring a lot of practical insights when presenting these Varroa Management Training Workshops.

For services to the industry I have been honoured to receive life membership of the Queensland Beekeepers Association, the Goodacre Memorial Award for meritorious service to apiculture, the David Banks Biosecurity Lifetime Achievement Award, plus being made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).