GOULBURN District Beekeeper’s Club hosted an interesting talk about honey, wound management and the work of the Wheen Bee Foundation on March 17, in place of their regular monthly meeting at the Goulburn Workers Club.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Wheen Bee Foundation CEO Dr Shonna Blair, a microbiologist who has been investigating the medicinal properties of honey for over 15 years, illustrated the importance of bees throughout civilisation and the vital role they are playing in its future.
In her introduction Dr Blair explained that the private research group was founded on the bequest of the estate of one of Australia’s most famous beekeepers Gretchin Wheen.
Gretchin Wheen was one of the first suppliers of quality queen bees to Australian and international commercial beekeepers.
She was a pioneer in instrumental insemination of queen bees, and passionate about the importance of stock improvement.
It was her concern for the huge problems facing the small but strategically important beekeeping industry.
The Wheen Bee Foundation was established with the aim of supporting and developing research, innovation, training and communication to ensure a viable beekeeping industry to protect our food supply.
Dr Blair highlighted the fact that around 80 per cent of our food cropping relied on bees for pollination. Much of this valuable service has been done using commercial beekeepers hives.
Unfortunately despite concerted biosecurity efforts bees face several threats including tracheal mite, European and American Foulbrood, Varroa, small hive beetle and Asian Bees which are a natural host for varroa mites.
“The Foundation is working to find ways to protect our industry from these threats,” Dr Blair said.
“Apart from the biosecurity issues which are a major concern for our beekeepers and the viability of a healthy Australian honey bee population there are threats associated with modern agriculture like crop deserts where there are massive plantings of a single crop, not providing a viable and sustained pollen source for bee populations.
“Pesticides have long been a concern, and the loss of habitat through urban development, bushfires and cyclones also put added pressure on the native and wild bee populations as well as the ability for beekeepers to access suitable food sources for their hives.”
Not allowing beekeepers access to forestry and national park areas where eucalypts and other native vegetation that provide excellent sources of honey producing pollen for bees is another area of concern for the industry, with authorities and other user groups pushing to keep beekeepers out.
Research has proven the importance of bees not just as honey producers but as the main pollinators for the world’s food crops.
She said that it was also important for hobby beekeepers to link up with their local beekeepers club and to register their hives to be kept informed of developments and ensure that their hives remained healthy.
This also helped should there be an outbreak of one of the biosecurity threat to the bee population and would aid in the isolation and control.
Dr Blair also spoke about the extensive research she and other researchers had been doing into the therapeutic properties of honey and how the antibiotic properties of honey, particularly the Manuka honey had been proven scientifically as a wound dressing.
She said that the multifaceted antibiotic properties of the honey was able to attack infections in several ways at once unlike other antibiotics.
She said it had been proven effective in treating bed sores and foot ulcers in patients.
The Manuka honey is derived from Leptospermum trees (commonly known as tea trees which grow native in Australia and New Zealand, although New Zealand claims that their trees are different to the ones common in Australia).
According to local beekeepers the Manuka honey is quite difficult to extract from the hives but they have no doubt that if there was a way to extract it more easily beekeepers would be keen to put their hives into patches of this common native tree.
Dr Blair said that supporting the Wheen Bee Foundation research into the therapeutic properties of honey there was plenty of historical evidence that honey has long been used for therapeutic purposes, both taken internally and used externally.
A retired physician in the audience said that Manuka Honey had been used in local clinics as a wound dressing however its use in hospital situations was not as widely accepted due to government policy.
For more information on the Foundation’s research see: www.wheenbeefoundation.org.au and to be informed about beekeeping in the Goulburn district see: www.goulburnbeekeepers.asn.au.