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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tristan" data-source="post: 14029" data-attributes="member: 30">i started just after varroa came in, helping dad out. basically small commercial. the biggest thing that influenced the amount of beeks, was profit. everyone got into beekeeping when it made money and they disappeared when it didn't. thats a far bigger factor than mites ever was.i don't recall anything that kept beeks in beekeeping in those early days. treating was easy compared to today but it made it hard to run the large amount of hives per beek. then beeks started shortcutting treatment to cut costs. hobbyists tended to get caught out by lack of good information. having hobbyist hives die from not bothering to treat was common.the problem with nz was there was never any real incentive to do anything other than treat, especially for the people/companies who had the size and ability to do it. the people with the interest didn't have the scale or ability to do it. then there was the first resistance scare, found by a local beek and we where at ground zero on that.  that actually put a bit of panic into beeks. that resulted in i think it was Randy Olivers first conference here (held in auckland). some of the local beeks turned to organic treatments (and ran it successfully for a long time).  i can't remember if the vhs started as a result of that or not. there was a lot of interest at the start but then that really just faded away especially as the gold rush took off.the reason for all this story is that aussie has a HUGE incentive to do something straight away. you have scientific proof of resistance (something we don't have afaik), something that govt can get behind. because aussie is in a really tough position, you can use that to get those long term projects up and running.</blockquote>

Verification: What type of honey is New Zealand famous for?

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