>
> >Did those Australian imports every make it to California?


Yes, they did.  USDA inspectors were waiting at the airport, and checked
them, but my reporter didn't know what they inspected for (likely for any
sort of mite, hive beetles, or small kangaroos).

The price was about the same as last year (depends upon number of pounds of
bees in the package (4 and 5 pound packages that I know of).  I don't know
the numbers.

However, since you have brought up the subject, I have been in communication
with several Canadians who have experience with large quantities of Aussie
packages.  What is interesting to me is the different experiences various
beekeepers have with the packages.  Perhaps it is due to different sources
(I personally know two exporters, and think that there is at least a
third).

Some U.S. beekeepers wax poetic about the packages, others tell tales of woe
due to chalkbrood and mite problems, and their spicy temperament, and
suggest requeening them (Dennis VanEnglesdorp suggested this at a recent
conference).

I have no previous experiences with the imports myself, but was put into an
interesting situation this spring.  One of the importers, knowing full well
of my general apprehension about the transportation of bees and their
parasites across oceans, donated 20 Aussie packages to me for a test.

Since my summer yards have been surrounded by Aussie bees for the past two
years, I figured that I had nothing to lose (or any new parasites to gain),
and my scientific curiosity told me to gratefully accept.

I installed the packages about two weeks ago onto drawn combs, heavy
(luckily) with honey stores.  It was a cold afternoon, with the temperature
was dropping quickly as I installed them.  By morning, they had a foot of
snow on top of the hives, and then no bee flight weather for 10 days.

I was curious as to how summer Aussie bees would perform under this kind of
stress.  They were taken from a long daylength (equivalent to early August)
warm environment, shipped to another hemisphere and a new photoperiod with a
several hour jetlag, and dumped onto cold combs in a freezing environment
(20F one night), with no flight or brood.

This question has been raised before on this List:  How do bees respond to
turning their world upside down--resetting their internal clock and
calendar, coupled with the stress of flight, transport, caging, and
temperature regime?  This experiment clearly put them under the most
stressful change imaginable!

Results?  When I checked back on them during a break in the weather after 11
days, they were flying like mad for cleansing flights.  There were very few
dead bees on the bottom boards, the clusters were tight, and the combs I
checked had young brood.

What I see is that bees are remarkably adaptable creatures.  As I've said
before, colonies can take transport and change in stride.  We shouldn't
project our anthropomorphism onto bees.  My personal jetlag from a flight to
Down Under may not be the same to bees.

I'll keep the List up to date with my observations.  I doubt that I'll see
anything new that previous purchasers of  Aussie packages haven't already
reported.  I just like to see things with my own eyes.

Randy Oliver

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