Bee Alliance Adopts New Name, Continues to Roll in Meeting Two
The ‘Bee Alliance’ of beekeeping, honey and pollination leaders has met for the second time and progress to meaningful results for those up and down the “value chain” is real according to several of the key players.
Initially titled New Zealand Honey and Bee Alliance, the second meeting on October 16 in Wellington saw the assembly agree on a rename to the ‘Aotearoa Bee Sector Alliance’, due to the similarity between the previous name and the recently established Honey and Bees New Zealand. Chairman of the later group, Murray Bush, says the second gathering of the alliance was “incredibly positive”.
“It’s a positive position to be in to have that many voices of the industry working cooperatively together. It has a lot of potential and we will be taking it forward,” Bush says.
Included in the Alliance are UMF Honey Association, Mānuka Charitable Trust, New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity, New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Inc, Auckland Beekeepers Club president Ken Brown and Comvita CEO Karl Gradon. The concept has been driven by the Ministry for Primary Industries, with programme director for export growth Terry Copeland convening the meetings. A month ago he described the initial September 10 roundtable as “everything I wanted it to be”, after taking around four months to turn concept to fruition.
According to the convenor, key discussion points at meeting two were the New Zealand-India free trade agreement, and the National Bee Health Survey (which replaces the Colony Loss Survey this year). Thinking was also advanced on how work projects which might emanate from the get-togethers can benefit the entire “value chain” of the industry.
“The key point of the Alliance is we are taking individual problems from beekeeper through to supplier or exporter, or pollination – because there are things we all need to look at, in our own individual worlds,” Bush says.
“What the Alliance is able to do is take a much broader, wider and bigger picture of those problems and look at them as they relate to the complete supply chain analysis.”
The HBNZ chair says that at meeting three their group expects to present potential project ideas.
“The benefit that will come out of the Alliance once we get our feet under the desk and we start looking at projects in depth is looking at being able to solve problems at a much larger scale than we can do individually,” Bush says.
Copeland says improving data collection across apiculture is also a key consideration.
“The Alliance will research data collection practices in other sectors to identify approaches that could be adopted to improve industry data. This includes inventory, market and consumer insights, and hive movement information to improve supply and demand understanding, and support better business planning and decision-making,” Copeland explains.
The Aotearoa Bee Sector Alliance’s third meeting is scheduled for November 12 in Wellington.
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