Talks with Beekeepers Continue, but Industry Leaders Eye Next Steps

In the month following Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ) members' July 17 vote to keep the group alive and hastily progress a restructuring process, meetings with beekeepers have been held up and down the country. While two more assemblies remain, both ApiNZ and fellow industry body New Zealand Beekeeping Inc (NZBI) are pressing to swiftly turn the lessons from consultation into a blueprint for a stronger industry advocacy group.

Utilising a largely word-of-mouth system, in August meetings with beekeepers were organised in Northland, on the 5th, Manawatu, the 12th, Gisborne, the 15^th and Nelson on the 22nd. In September meetings are scheduled with the Southern Beekeepers Discussion Group, in Balclutha on September 5, and in Hamilton, on September 12.

Karin Kos, ApiNZ CEO, addresses beekeepers gathered at the Mountain Valley Honey site outside Nelson on August 22. One of four meetings with apiarists held in August, with two more to come in September.

In a united front ApiNZ CEO Karin Kos and policy analyst Phil Edmonds were joined by NZBI advisor Ian Fletcher by video link in Gisborne and in person in Himatangi, in the Manawatu. The ApiNZ leaders are expected to be joined by one of Fletcher or NZBI president Jane Lorimer in each of the final two meeting destinations.

Beyond those meetings, both Kos, Fletcher and Lorimer have expressed their desire for a workable model for an industry group to be drafted and presented back to beekeepers as soon as possible. With that in mind, NZBI have scheduled an open-invite “roundtable” meeting for September 17 via video-link, with an eye to collaborating with ApiNZ and wider industry on forming a working group to move forward with.

“Workforce, task force, call it what you want,” Fletcher says.

“But we need a joint group of people who take all the discussions we have had in the last 18 months and turn it into ‘if we had organisation x, we could pay for it using y or z options’. To get us to a point where beekeepers are being asked to react to a proposal, rather than just further discussions.”

“What do you want from an industry body” was the question asked to beekeepers to launch discussions in Nelson.

Funding of any group is the key consideration and Kos says that during their consultations with beekeeping groups in August “views are varied on representation, and on the best funding mechanism”. She plans to provide a detailed report on findings from the latest round of talks with beekeepers following the September 12 gathering in Hamilton, a dossier that would help further set the table for a roundtable discussion and working group.

As it stands, both Fletcher and Kos have separately outlined biosecurity, bee health, honey market access issues, and training the next generation of beekeepers and industry leaders, as key issues to have arisen in talks with beekeepers.

Fletcher also added pollination, compliance costs and research as points on his list, in a note he presented to the ApiNZ board ahead of an August 29 meeting and which was shared with Apiarist’s Advocate. In that note he encouraged the ApiNZ board to work with NZBI and others to develop a proposal for industry with commercial beekeepers at its centre.

Gavins Apiaries in Titoki, Northland, was the first of the regional beekeeper meetings attended by Karin Kos and Phil Edmonds of ApiNZ in August, with NZBI advisor Ian Fletcher attending others either in person or online.

While talk of a levy to fund industry good activities has arisen during discussions with beekeepers, Fletcher’s note stresses the need to form a proposal based on voluntary funding ‘for at least a couple of years’. Further to that, it outlines that ‘the community won’t accept proposals from one side or the other, and we need to work together anyway’, in regard to ApiNZ-NZBI cohesion.

Likely based on examples from recent history, Fletcher also points out ‘each major group has an effective veto over progress; these vetoes must be resolved by agreement’.

ApiNZ’s schedule of beekeeper meetings is part of a plan to inform a proposal for restructured industry leadership being funded by a $150,000 grant from the Honey Industry Trust. How a roundtable meeting in mid-September to form a widely-agreed-upon working-group fits in with the work schedule as defined in that grant is uncertain, with the document not made publicly available, but it would provide a level of rapidity which is now widely regarded as essential.