After a highly eventful six years on first the board of the American Foulbrood (AFB) Management Agency and then seeing through its transition to the New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity Trust (NZBB) as chairperson, Mark Dingle recently departed the seat, replaced by Simon Cook. He reflects on a much-changed industry and what’s next.

The Trust tasked with helping beekeepers eliminate American foulbrood (AFB) in New Zealand has a new independent chairperson. Simon Cook, a kiwifruit grower with a passion for biosecurity, enters the role at New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity (NZBB) having recently vacated the top chair at Kiwifruit Vine Health (KVH).

Beekeepers? Technical experts? A mix of both? Just who should make up advisory groups to New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity (NZBB) is the topic of consultation between the American foulbrood (AFB) agency and the beekeepers who fund it – and if sufficient beekeepers don’t speak up the decision will be made for them.

Levies for American foulbrood are set to remain the same into the 2026/27 season, following consultation with beekeepers. But should the agency, New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity (NZBB), be advancing plans to extend their remit beyond AFB into wider bee health and biosecurity as their name suggests? Results on that question were murky and the path forward now similar, right as the country contends with a crucial beekeeping-related biosecurity incursion.

Appalled by the perceived “deception” of the American Foulbrood (AFB) Pest Management Plan Agency’s move to establish itself as a Trust just a few months ago, Bay of Plenty Beekeeper Jody Mitchell now calls herself a trustee of that group – New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity (NZBB) – along with Mānuka Health national apiculture strategy manager Brian McCall.

With two vacancies emerging on their board, the recently formed New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity Trust (NZBB) have put the call out to commercial beekeepers – ‘we want you’. In recent years applicants have been thin on the ground, but the current chair is hoping recent interest in their move to a new independent model of governance will entice more to step forward.

On June 27 the Minister for Biosecurity, Andrew Hoggard, dropped a bombshell announcement – the sole compulsory levy funded aspect of the beekeeping industry, the American Foulbrood Pest Management Plan (AFB PMP) would be under new governance, in the form of a Charitable Trust led by existing board members. The news has been met with anger from some beekeepers decrying an “abhorrent lack of transparency” and “despicable conduct”. Despite this, tentative steps towards an impro