Bob wrote:

> Can you give me a few reasons why we need your bees and queens?

Perhaps you feel you don't need them.  If these sentiments are held by US
beekeepers, you won't have any more stock arriving than already arrives from
NZ and Aust via Canada. It takes willing buyers in the USA, for trade to
occur.

> Any open border is a risk for importation of a new beekeeping problem is it
> not?

Refering to the protocols as an "open border" is more than a little
misleading.

> Are we going to be able to ship queens and packages into your country? Seems
> only fair. If not why not?

If the USA is able to come up with a way of preventing the transmission of:

Tracheal Mite,
European Foul Brood,
Small Hive Beetle,
Africanised Honey Bees,

to NZ that eliminates *significant* risk (and there will be a definition of
"significant" somewhere in the raft of accepted international trade
protocols) and can guarantee permanent repeated performance, then NZ would
be compelled to look at it.

The reality is that the cost of doing this would be great, the technical
feasibility would be low/zero, and the demand would be low, adding up to a
prohibitively high cost for any eventual shipments.  Who would pay at your
end to set these up?  The US government/taxpayers?

If Congress got wind of that..........., the derision heaped on the Honey
Loan Programme would look like an accolade :-)

> I honestly believe your country could benifit from the SMR trait.

I quite agree.  However the *repeated* shipping of this genetic stock is
unlikely to occur due to the immense (impossible?) difficulties of keeping
out the above mentioned pests and diseases, but I am sure that there are
people in NZ that would like to see the importation of semen and or eggs etc.

Perhaps this may happen.

Regards,
Peter Bray
_________________________________________________________
Airborne Honey Ltd., Pennington St, PO Box 28, Leeston,
New Zealand Fax 64-3-324-3236,  Phone 64-3-324-3569
http://www.airborne.co.nz  [log in to unmask]