Blindsided Beekeepers See Red at AFB PMP Change

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 improved outcome are underway.

“Everyone’s phones went off at the same time with the alert for it,” explains Jody Mitchell of the scene at a meeting of around 30 beekeepers at Zespri’s offices in Mt Maunganui at 2.54pm on June 27.

The logo of the recently announced independent governors of the AFB PMP, the New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity Trust, which holds potential for a much expanded role.

The Kaimai Range Honey owner was chairing a meeting seeking to establish a ‘Bay of Plenty Commercial Beekeepers Group’ when news that Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ) would be replaced by the New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity Trust (NZBB) to implement and enforce the AFB PMP hit inboxes.

The Minister says he has “confidence that the NZBB will manage the plan in a way that represents the interests of all beekeepers” while ApiNZ board chair Nathan Guy, as his group resigned their role, claimed “a new era for the beekeeping industry, one that signals a maturity in how it organises itself around bee health under a structure that will support a more collaborative and resilient beekeeping industry”.

Despite those claims, the interests of beekeepers have not been sought and sections of the industry see the new NZBB Trust as anything but “collaborative” at this point.

Jody Mitchell describes the process to appoint NZBB to the role of overseeing the AFB PMP as “deception” and, along with fellow Bay of Plenty beekeepers has written to the Minister for Biosecurity, Andrew Hoggard, to denounce his ‘incomprehensible decision’.

“There was rage in the room. We were mortified, disgusted and so disappointed,” Mitchell continues her description of events.

“It seemed like such deception to me. We are working with open communication through the industry and this is obviously been secretly hidden in the background. There has been no communication, there has been no consultation and I don’t see how their little group can be representative of our industry when they have not discussed this with anyone else and snuck it through. It feels like such a lie.”

Friday afternoon public announcements are nothing new for the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), with the timing limiting the ability of certain media to respond before staff finish work for the week. On this occasion though, MPI could hardly have got it worse if they were hoping to bury the news, as the Bay of Plenty beekeepers collectively rallied against it.

Industry group New Zealand Beekeeping Inc (NZBI) has long advocated for an ‘independent’ body to oversee the AFB PMP, and the appointment of NZBB acquiesces that, but president Jane Lorimer is another disturbed by an “abhorrent” lack of transparency in the process and questioning whether a Trust is the right governance model to use.

A scene from inside the inaugural meeting of the Bay of Plenty Commercial Beekeepers group at Zespri offices in Mt Maunganui, where the mood turned to anger when news of NZBB hit mid-meeting.

NZBB, as the former ‘Agency’ is now to be known, believes the outrage is unjustified though and, in practice, it will be “business as usual” for them and the beekeepers they serve.

“I don’t think it is a drastic change,” board chair Mark Dingle says.

“The only thing that has changed is the establishment and appointment of the Charitable Trust as the management agency. Everything else stays the same. What we do, how we do it, our powers under the Biosecurity Act, the way in which we consult on the levy, and all the ways we currently engage with beekeepers stays the same.”

New branding and a website has been rolled out, at nzbb.org.nz

A Broader Scope

The need for change has come about because of the thin ice which ApiNZ finds itself on. They have been seeking ways to stay afloat in the face of failing finances over the past year, and resolutions to dissolve will be voted on by their members at a July 17 AGM.

The Minister’s office therefore requested the Management Agency to present a model for independent governance. With the lack of biosecurity preparedness in the industry, they took the opportunity to future proof the structure as having the potential to expand the mandate under NZBB – but it will only be activated should beekeepers request it.

“We are quite clear that the AFB levy can only be used on administration of the AFB PMP. If we want to go and extend the mandate, we can only do so if that is what beekeepers want us to do. There is a gap in our biosecurity preparedness, but NZBB isn’t in a position to fill it unless beekeepers want us to,” Dingle explains.

NZBB chairperson Mark Dingle says beekeepers will see “no drastic change” in the management of the AFB PMP following appointment of a Charitable Trust as the new management agency.

Canvassing beekeeper opinion on the matter “gets a bit tricky” though the NZBB chairperson admits, given it would be outside the ‘AFB-only’ restriction of fund use. There is the potential to include the topic alongside the annual AFB-levy consultation which will take place with beekeepers in September though.

“If we are already consulting with beekeepers on that topic, we may extend it to add some questions of whether this mandate is something beekeepers want and whether they see NZBB as filling that role. It may be they decide it should be someone else. We don’t want to presuppose anything. We want beekeeper opinion on whether there is beekeeper appetite for a broader role,” Dingle says.

Seeing Red Out of the Blue

Whether that would provide a suitable avenue for sufficient debate of what could amount to a substantial advancement in the role of the former ‘Agency’ is uncertain. What is certain with some beekeepers though is, the change to the NZBB came with a damaging lack of consultation.

Minister for Biosecurity, Andrew Hoggard.

Both Dingle and NZBB chief executive Niha Long have been involved in industry-wide ‘roundtable’ meetings hosted by NZBI in recent months, which have aimed to transparently bring together beekeepers and key industry stakeholders as an ApiNZ dissolution looms. A lack of biosecurity preparedness was a central topic at these meetings, yet at no point did either Dingle or Long seek to notify the meetings of the biosecurity-focused Trust they were preparing.

“We are around the table talking to them and none of this is mentioned. It is all ‘we are working with you’ and ‘it’s up to the Minister’ but we have been totally kept in the dark,” says Mitchell, who was motivated to begin formation of Bay of Plenty Commercial Beekeepers as a result of the roundtable process.

NZBI organised those roundtable meetings and the approach taken by the now-NZBB team has angered the president and setback relations.

“This whole lack of transparency is abhorrent. This move has severely eroded any trust built up with the board of the AFB PMP over the last 18 months, and the MPI officials have gone down in my estimation to a rock bottom low and it is likely to take considerable time to mend the fences,” Lorimer says.

NZBI was made aware of the potential formation of an AFB PMP Trust about a month prior to the official announcement, during discussions with the kiwifruit industry group Zespri who had learned of it. They went to the Management Agency to seek more information, but were told little, NZBI advisor Ian Fletcher says.

“I don’t like that the Agency is talking to Zespri in terms that are more open than what it has been sharing with beekeepers. That is not right. Who are you accountable to, the kiwifruit industry or beekeepers?” Fletcher says.

Why the Code of Silence?

The NZBB team say until the Minister made the announcement that the Trust would be appointed, there was nothing to share with industry.

“We were acting blind until the Minister was able to confirm to us that the new Trust would be appointed, and we didn’t get notified until about a week prior,” says Val Graham, deputy chair of NZBB.

“Until then, we were not in a position to consult anyone because we didn’t know we were going to have the Agency transitioned to our care.”

The first of three apiculture industry 'roundtable' meetings hosted this year, on April 10, where the AFB Agency's Mark Dingle and Niha Long (both at right) chose not to disclose plans to establish a Charitable Trust which might act as the new management agency, a decision which has now angered beekeepers.

That position throws Minister Andrew Hoggard out in front as the one keeping beekeepers in the dark, given that Agency board minutes show that MPI and the Agency were already well on the way to forming a Trust when the first roundtable meeting took place on April 10 with Long and Dingle in attendance.

On March 27 Apiarist’s Advocate asked the Minister to provide clarity around the process of appointing a successor to ApiNZ. After being directed to four different email addresses, an answer of little substance was eventually returned, which made no mention of the work underway to develop a standalone Trust.

ApiNZ also kept both its membership and wider industry in the dark over the matter despite beekeepers having raised concerns to them over who their successor might be.

The newly-formed Bay of Plenty Commercial Beekeepers have busted out their ‘seal’ for the first time in making their displeasure known to the Minister in a pointed letter which states ‘outrage at your incomprehensible decision to appoint an unaccountable and unacceptable trust …  it smacks of self-dealing and self-promotion’.

Mitchell says their concerns should be taken seriously by Hoggard, as their group collectively owns approximately 10 percent of New Zealand’s registered hives.

Trustable

The decision to present the Minister with a Trust, rather than an incorporated society, was reached due to the short timeframe with which the Agency had to act, combined with a desire to streamline decision making, according to their leadership. Forming an incorporated society would mean several rounds of consultation with levy payers to flesh out an appropriate constitution.

“In the meantime, if ApiNZ disappeared out of the picture, we would have had no Pest Management Plan and nothing to deliver to beekeepers,” Graham says.

Foreseeing that situation, as ApiNZ’s future began to look murky earlier in 2025, NZBI leadership say they notified the Minister that they would be available to take over as the named Agency until a suitable, independent, group was formed.

Any suggestion that NZBI was intending to be the long-term successor to oversee the AFB PMP is flatly untrue Lorimer says, pointing to their written submissions to consultation rounds that call for just the opposite – PMP independence from industry groups.

“We got a polite, but very firm ‘no’ from the Minister personally,” Fletcher says of their offer made in February.

“The reason we were given from MPI officials was they wanted a body that was independent from industry politics. That decision, in principle, is difficult to argue with. The way it has been executed raises serious questions, primarily because of the nature of the Trust and the accountability of the trustees.”

That’s the key area where the perspective of some beekeepers and those representing them on the NZBB board differ – the accountability of an unelected board. The Trust Deed sets out that the sitting board appoints its own new members, stating ‘the Board may appoint any person or persons as a Trustee as it sees fit taking into account the skills and experience required to fulfil the role of Trustee’.

“NZBI believed that the independent entity should have been an incorporated society so its members, levy payers, had a mechanism for input into what they collectively want as priorities for the operational team to implement. Also, it would allow for an election of officers to the role,” Lorimer says.

On the other hand, NZBB’s board say the Trust’s method of appointments is very similar to how the Agency of the past operated anyway – but without the step of gaining ApiNZ sign-off on appointments – and that an MPI official is included on the board, who offers oversight.

NZBB chief executive Niha Long says her agency will be just as accountable as ever following recent changes. 

While levy payers may have no say over who sits on the new board, Long says NZBB is still as accountable as the ‘old’ Agency was to them, through “levy consultation, the annual report, the audited financial accounts, the newsletter, our communications, an AGM, and all the messages delivered through our AP1s and AP2s, Hive Hub and apiary coordinators”.

Room for Movement

While considerable ground exists between proponents and opponents on the method of forming NZBB’s Trust and the level of accountability it provides, within three days of the announcement a meeting of the most vocal had taken place. On the Monday after the late-Friday-afternoon news drop, NZBB had an in-person board meeting in Wellington, after which a video meeting with a biosecurity group (formed from the roundtable process) joined them.

“I thought it was a productive meeting. We listened to them, they listened to us, and by the end I think we came away with a common understanding of where each was coming from,” Dingle says, of the June 30 meeting which featured Fletcher as roundtable facilitator and eight commercial beekeepers, including Mitchell.

Of course, listening and “common understanding” does not mean change, but it is required before any might be considered, and a follow up meeting has been proposed where more detailed concerns at the Trust Deed can be raised by the roundtable biosecurity group.

“We have put all this together at great speed … so that we could maintain a seamless transition of the Agency into the new entity. It was not only a lot of work, but a lot of work done quickly. We are not saying we have everything right, and we are happy to listen to other points of view,” Graham says.

Fletcher says the meeting resulted in “inconclusive and at times quite pointed debate about how we got here and, as our late Queen said, ‘recollections may vary’”.

“Despite that, the real question now is, what happens now for beekeepers?”

Getting a better feel for beekeeper sentiment is the next step and so on July 7 Fletcher will facilitate a fourth, online, meeting in the roundtable process. Any beekeepers who wish to attend are invited to do so and, after that, a group will be chosen to address NZBB with specific concerns of the Trust Deed.

“There are clearly still significant issues that need to be worked through, but there is an agreement to a process to do that,” Fletcher says, adding “It will be up to the beekeeping side to determine what its priorities are and, frankly, how hard they want to press them”.

Any beekeepers wishing to contribute to that roundtable conversation are invited to email afbreview@gmail.com to offer opinion, or register attendance and receive a link to the July 7 meeting.