Fuel Shortage Highlights Need for Strong Beekeeper Advocacy

Why should beekeepers support the proposed new industry group? New Zealand’s looming diesel and petrol shortage, alongside a continuing major biosecurity incursion, is making it clear that beekeepers need effective leadership now, and will surely need it in the future too if their livelihoods are to be protected.

ApiNZ chief executive Karin Kos has fronted apiculture’s advocacy for the 10 years of the industry-good group’s existence and stresses the need for sound representation, particularly in times of crisis.

There are plenty of unknowns when it comes to the potential new industry body proposed by Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ) and New Zealand Beekeeping Inc (NZBI), but ensuring some form of continuation of beekeeper representation is a necessity says the woman who has been at the coal-face of that advocacy for a decade.

“There needs to be a voice of our industry and it needs to be heard,” says Karin Kos, ApiNZ’s chief executive for all 10 years of the industry body’s existence.

Falling membership in later years has seen the group go close to collapse and is now limping towards a reformation with the help of fellow national beekeeping group NZBI. With a consultation period with beekeepers for that new ‘framework’ having recently closed, Kos has been juggling meetings with government around potential fuel rationing as well as the yellow-legged hornet incursion.

“It reminds me of the Covid days where you have to be organised as a sector and represent your sector because, if there is a shortage of diesel, you don’t want to be forgotten about,” Kos says.

ApiNZ has made an official submission to the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment urging the department to ensure that beekeepers get the appropriate priority listing should fuel become rationed. The government has proposed five ‘bands’, with ApiNZ advocating beekeepers and the wider honey industry fall into band ‘B’ as ‘food supply and primary production’. That would seem an easy decision for the government to make, but Kos says such decisions going the way of an industry – especially one bereft of able representation – should not be assumed.

MBIE's weekly fuel stock update for New Zealand, dated April 8.

“The decision makers in government are being hit from all sides,” Kos says of a crisis such as the looming fuel shortage.

“Everyone’s interests are being pushed to the fore. Are we going to sit back and let it happen for us? We need to be proactive and explain when the peak times for us as an industry are, the things we will need, and what the government will need to be thinking about for us for their planning purposes.

“We help remind them – don’t forget the bees. Everyone knows what the dairy and meat producers need, but there is a whole lot of us smaller groups who could face a shortage of really important inputs into people’s businesses and livelihoods.”

Kos says that, if an industry such as beekeeping does not effectively put its case forward, they likely won’t be completely “forgotten” – “because there will be a whole lot of screaming at the end of the day”. However, they will likely be “last cab off the rank,” according to the experienced advocate.

The ApiNZ leader, along with fellow primary sector groups’ chief executives, meets weekly with Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) director general Ray Smith. She says ensuring the beekeeping industry’s place around tables such as this, plus the maintenance of relationships with key decision makers, are why now multi-year considerable efforts have been made to reform an industry group and ensure a void is not left.

Along with industry advocacy to government, there has been extra work going on behind the scenes recently with ApiNZ’s now few remaining staff touching base with other key suppliers to beekeepers and honey sellers to gauge any supply constraints. Kos says key supplies to industry, such as packaging, seem assured for at least two months, but it is something they are keeping abreast of.

Beyond the fuel shortages, the ongoing hornet incursion has seen Kos, along with NZBI advisor Ian Fletcher, meet with MPI on behalf of beekeepers. Both have said the “united” approach has been of significant benefit to that process, further highlighting the advantages that can be achieved through the right approach to beekeeper representation.

Before that hornet reared its head in New Zealand there was the highly-disruptive years of Covid lockdowns and travel restrictions.

ApiNZ and NZBI have worked closely together over the past six months on not just the framework for a new, united, industry group, but also the yellow-legged hornet response.

“During Covid we had to step in and represent beekeepers to fight for their ability to access their hives. We were able to do that and get that over the line, after the government started with a blanket announcement that no one was going to go anywhere. You have to be able to get those wins and it comes down to good relationships. We have built those relationships over many years and this industry does not want to lose that, along with the many other good things that come with an industry-good organisation,” Kos says.

It is not just about having a voice the ApiNZ chief executive stresses, but “a voice which will be heard”.

The initial framework for the new industry group has been budgeted to be far lower resourced than ApiNZ – especially during the years of the mānuka boom – but it will at least ensure some level of beekeeper advocacy to continue the work of ApiNZ, along with NZBI, and before them both the more-than-a-century of the National Beekeepers’ Association.

“Knowing who to talk to and where to go is really important,” Kos reinforces, adding “beekeepers who work on their businesses every day don’t have time to do that and they don’t always have access to the people who you need to have access to”.