If you have any anecdotal evidence from visiting New Zealand beekeepers that New Zealand bees have 1) tracheal mite, 2) varroa, 3) European foulbrood, 4) tropilaelaps, 5) braula, I would be very interested in hearing more. Otherwise, I think you owe an apology to the New Zealand beekeeping industry, via BEE-L, if you are insinuating otherwise. As to American foulbrood, while it is true that New Zealand has its fair share of this disease, our industry has choosen what I believe is the very sensible approach of controlling its spread by "search and destroy" methods, not through the use of chemicals. I don't want to enter into a debate on the pros and cons of this drug-free AFB control in this forum, but from my experience, both in NZ and in North America, one often over-looked advantage of this approach is that the thorough examination of hives which is required tends to also lead to better over-all hive management, at least in commercial outfits. What can be said without reservation, however, is that the NZ approach has resulted in one of the best apiary registration and inspection systems found anywhere. Beekeepers here are required by law to return a yearly inspection statement, giving full details of every apiary site (including topo map grid references), and the findings of their AFB inspections. The industry also levies its members to pay for an independently-administered AFB control programme. Although government personnel carry out programme services under contract to the industry, absolutely no government funding is provided. Upwards of 10% of all registered apiaries in the country are inspected each year under that programme. This is not to say, of course, that we don't have our share of beekeepers with AFB problems; beekeepers who cause ecomonic damage to their fellow beekeepers, and who often require counselling by government apiculturalists (which has to be paid for by the industry itself). Just recently, however, the NZ Beekeepers Association has been given the opportunity, under a new piece of government legislation (called the Biosecurity Act), to write its own legally-binding procedures for the control of American foulbrood (since it is, of course, their disease). The legislation will allow for the collecting of levies to pay for an AFB control programme, and should provide, in the system that the beekeepers are proposing, sufficent financial incentives (in the form of lower levies) for beekeepers who actually do a good job in their AFB control. Under that same system, the other type of beekeeper may soon find it economically quite difficult to carry on.