It’s an exciting time for those of us passionate about bees, with greater awareness of their importance in our food system and biodiversity, millions being poured into research, more interest from consumers about their honey, and biosecurity and climate being a constant threat to our historically healthy, thriving industry.
So when Lindsay was invited to present at the 4th annual Bee Congress in Sydney, it was fantastic to be a part of the conversation, brought to us by the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council (AHBIC).
Lindsay was accompanied by many in our beekeeping team, including Luke, Doug, Greg and Lachie as part of their professional development to learn from the best in the business on all things bees. We’re proud to have such a strong team with a mix of experience and beginner’s enthusiasm, with the staff and retention challenges so many businesses are facing at the moment.
The congress kicked off on the Wednesday with a welcome evening, while Thursday to Saturday saw the talks, presentations, reports and panels roll on under a huge range of topics, including bee tech, biosecurity, nutrition, authenticity and traceability, polination, business resiliance, education, queen breeding and more.
One of the highlights for our team was the research around the health benefits of honey. Most people know about the medicinal applications of manuka honey, but more is coming out about honey as a more holistic health product, with antifungal peroperties and benefits for gut flora and the digestive system. Even better, much of this research is being led and championed by female scientists – great to see in what’s traditionally been male-dominated industry.
On Saturday Lindsay presented his session on best practice beehive transportation, detailing the iterations of his truck mesh curtains which bring many benefits to business, beekeeper and bee. On the back of two of Lindsay’s peers already using his set up and seeing how it works for their operation, we want to share everything any beekeeper needs to know to replicate our success for themselves.
Read more about how it all works here, and download our one-pager cheat sheet with all the specs below. If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to us here and we’ll help you out.
Next up, Lindsay was part of a panel about the configuration of cool rooms in hive processing for mid to large operations. Having been in our purpose-built plant and packaging HQ for about 8 years now, we have two big cool rooms and some lessons for others on what we’d do differently. If you want more information on this, feel free to get in touch with us on that one too.
Last but very far from being least, the gala dinner announced the Australian Beekeeper of the year, where Lindsay was awarded runner up! You can read more about that one here.
And it all finished with a spectacular boat cruise on Sydney Harbour as part of Vivid Sydney.
Thanks to AHBIC for the invitations and the opportunty to be a part of this year’s congress, and for supporting our industry to face the challenges ahead.