In a recent Bee-L, Chris Allen mentioned that we in Australia have a very
strict quarantine system in place.  To show you how serious we are in keeping
out unwanted pest such as varroa, tracheal mites, Tropilaelaps and Africanised
bees, I thought I would give Bee-Liners a brief outline of our requirements.
 
Firstly, before a queen bee can be imported to Australia, the hive from which
it is coming must have miticide strips placed in that hive for 56 days.  There
is the usual documentation to be filled out in the country from which it is
coming.
 
The queen bee must be mailed to our Quarantine Authorities here in Australia.
When it arrives, the queen bee is taken out, examined visually for mites and
placed in a new queen mailing cage with fresh escorts.  The escorts, which
accompanied the queen bee to Australia, are examined externally and internally
for any mites and other diseases and viruses.
 
The queen bee is held in the new mailing cage for 14 days.  After this time
the escorts are examined, externally and internally, for mites.  If they are
free, then the queen bee is introduced into a nucleus colony in a flight cage.
This nucleus colony also has miticide strips placed in it.  This way, there
is no access to outside bees.
 
Once the queen is successfully introduced, there is a wait till there is
hatching brood available so that a DNA test can be carried out for Africanised
genes.  If this is satisfactory, then the importer is allowed to graft larvae
from the nucleus colony.  This is then taken away from the quarantine station
and rasied in the importers hives outside the station.
 
When the importer has completed the grafting, the nucleus colony is destroyed
by burning.  The queen bee is never released into the Australian environment.
Only the grafted larvae are allowed to leave the station.
 
So you can see that we are serious about our quarantine and do not wish to
have people breaching that quarantine.  If people try to illegally bring in
queen bees, we have dogs at the airports and mail centres that are trained to
detect bees, along with other items such as plants and meat.
 
I have given a brief outline of our procedue for importing stock to Australia
that I hope will be of interest to other beekeepers.  If anyone wants to have
the official documentation, I will be able to send them to you.
 
 
 
Trevor Weatherhead