Will There be a Beekeeping Conference in Winter ‘26?

With the future of national-level industry groups up in the air, a void remains for an event venue and date to host a major beekeeping conference this winter. However, there appears to be a desire from beekeepers to gather and preliminary planning is underway, while the cloud of skyrocketing travel prices lingers.

The winter conference has long been a staple of the Kiwi beekeeping calendar, and last off-season beekeepers were offered a range of get-togethers hosted in regions as spread as Bay of Plenty, Wellington and Christchurch. The previous winter Whanganui, Ashburton, Hamilton and Bay of Plenty provided the social settings. In the years prior, multi-day events hosted by Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ) bounced between North and South Islands.

National beekeeping conferences in the past have featured large trade displays, such as this at the Rotorua Events Centre in 2021, and even drawn well over 1000 attendees. Any 2026 event will be much scaled back, with industry leaders in the early stages of planning a suitable event this winter despite uncertainty around travel costs.

As of early April, only Mānuka Orchard’s open day on July 24 in Paengaroa has a set date. This year that is likely to be focused around their customers, making for a step back from their larger, open-door event last July.

Discussions between ApiNZ and New Zealand Beekeeping Inc (NZBI) are taking place to put together an event that would not only foster the usual beekeeping and honey industry discussions, trade displays and socialisation, but also provide a venue to advance a new industry body. Timelines for creation of that group are uncertain, but a gathering of beekeepers could provide a venue to further refine the constitution of the new group, or even implement it.

“People want an event and we want it to do something which fits what the whole industry wants … we also want to fit it in with our aspirations to achieve a single, representative organisation setup,” says Ian Fletcher, advisor to NZBI.

ApiNZ chief executive Karin Kos says the most common request from beekeepers recently, following any discussion about the new industry body proposal is, ‘will there be a conference?’.

The 2025 Honey Bee Research Symposium was held at Victoria University of Wellington and just under 100 people attended. Where it will be held this winter will likely depend on if it can be successfully scheduled alongside a larger industry-group planned conference.

“We would love to and it needs to be a joint event between NZBI and ApiNZ. We are having those discussions at the moment. It needs to be cost effective and it needs to work for beekeepers. Our concern is, with the Middle East conflict, flights and cost of travel. That will potentially be a constraint and we are very aware of it,” Kos says.

With that last consideration in mind, NZBI president Jane Lorimer says she has been kicking the tires on the potential for a multi-venue, but audio-visually linked, series of beekeeping get-togethers on the same day.

“It might be a conference with a difference,” Lorimer explains.

“If you can synchronise speakers through audiovisual link, and then organise groups to meet at several places so you are not just sitting at home via Zoom or Teams, then that might work.”

The Mānuka Orchard Open Day, July 2025 in Paengaroa, saw over 100 people attend. Their 2026 iteration is expected to be more centred on their own business, but is the only beekeeping-event thus far set for the coming winter.

In the past trade-displays have formed a major part of conferences though and such a spread attendance would limit their practicality and value.

Given the oil-supply uncertainties besetting the country, all options are still being considered at this early stage.

Like Mānuka Orchard, New Zealand Beeswax have hosted events in the past and, also like Mānuka Orchard, they are understood to be more than willing to step aside if an industry-body-centric event gets off the ground.

The now regular fixture of the New Zealand Honey Bee Research Symposium hopes to back for its seventh annual iteration to give scientists and beekeepers a place to connect. ApiNZ and NZBI are in close contact with the symposium planners and both are hoping to run their events in conjunction with one another to create “economies of scale”. Dates in early-June or late-July are believed to be favoured by the symposium planning team.

So, there is very little set in stone but April is shaping as a key month for planning the winter events calendar. Looming over it all is the uncertainty around travel costs and even potentially restrictions, but, if a combined ApiNZ-NZBI group can pull off an event to appease beekeepers, it can only help get any new industry body off on the right foot.