Although both are export products, the issues on grapes versus live bees are
quite different. In theory, you can simply gas (or otherwise treat) the
grapes and kill all the pests (although that apparently is not done very
well).  Doing the same to live bees would not result in a sellable product.
Live bees are not even comparable to sending live plants your way (again,
you could, in theory, treat the plant in such a way to kill any pests on it,
remove the soil and bleach to kill pathogens, etc, and still have some
plants arrive ok).

Sending livestock or other live animals, however, is a more risky
proposition. That is why almost every country has stringent quarantine
requirements for such importations (for example, hooved animals in the EU or
ask the CDC where the current West Nile Virus "epidemic" came from --
carried by birds, spread by mosquitoes and native to the middle east region,
has spread nationwide in just over a year in the US). Perhaps if you were
willing to quarantine queen imports for six months for observation and pest
removal (which would probably require massive doses of some chemical that
would damage egg-laying), prior to the bees being delivered to the customer?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
>
> On the basis of that, we are expected (by both
> our government and the US) to accept things such as the grapes that Trevor
> referred to.  If there is a disgruntled aspect here, it would be that the
> exporters of those grapes have continually failed quarantine requirements,
> with the result that we have on a number of occasions had to use our own
> biosecurity facilities to stop such things as (to us) exotic spiders, etc.