Dr. Tom Sanford wrote

> At any rate, I am passing on this note to the bee-l discussion list.
> Perhaps someone from Australia or New Zealand might be of some help.

I for one would be very interested in sending queen bees to Guam and I am sure that other queen breeders in Australia and New Zealand would be also. However, as Guam is officially part of the USA we are not allowed to export to the USA at present but look forward to when we can.

It is interesting with honey bees on some of the Pacific Islands. From all accounts there is limited opportunities for honey flows and the bees tend to be low in protein for most of the time and when a good flow does come around, the bees often collapse because of the low body protein.

There have been several attempts to establish queen rearing operations on these islands and they have not succeeded because of the reasons given above.  In the case of Tonga they found a pollen mite called Edbaralus (or similiar spelling) which resulted in the markets they were sending to (mainly the UK as I recall) placing bans on the imports from Tonga.  There was no evidence that these pollen mites would affect Apis mellifera but they were shut out.

As these islands do not have any of the parasitic mites at present, I would counsel any one thinking of sending queens from areas that have parasitic mites to places like Guam NOT to.  They could get them from Hawaii at present as it is part of the USA and would have no restricitons as we do.

Trevor Weatherhead
AUSTRALIA