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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (25 February) . . Page.. 375 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

case today. In many ways, the ACT is not a suitable place for the commercial operation of apiaries, but it is certainly a place where a number of people still keep bees for hobby purposes. Beekeeping is not permitted in conservation areas in the Territory, which means that most of the Territory is not suitable for beekeeping.

As Minister for the Environment, I have had a number of complaints from time to time about people being affected by bee swarms, almost invariably bees kept by neighbours in urban areas. It seems to me that the transfer of these provisions to the control of the Animal Diseases Act 1993 gives us an opportunity of being able to regulate more appropriately activity within an urban area. I believe that the provisions are better suited in that Act to the kind of problem which occurs apparently fairly frequently here. The main concerns surrounding contemporary beekeeping in the ACT are related to preventing the spread of diseases to commercial apiaries. Mr Corbell mentioned the position in New South Wales. As far as I am aware, we have no commercial beekeeping operations in the ACT but there are some in surrounding parts of New South Wales, and that is why it is important for us to have a means of protecting appropriately those commercial apiaries from diseases that may spring up in the ACT or for some reason afflict the ACT.

My department also had consultations with the Beekeepers Association of the ACT. They had a number of concerns, which I think can be addressed adequately through regulation. We are going to gazette bees as stock, so that the provisions of the Animal Diseases Act apply to them. As appropriate, diseases of bees will be declared under the Animal Diseases Act to be endemic diseases. A regulation will be made to prohibit the keeping of bees other than in framed hives so that inspections of diseases can be undertaken. A regulation will be made to prohibit honey and honeycomb being left exposed in the open, where it may be a source of infection for other bees. The Parks and Conservation Service will maintain staff with appropriate training who can assist in the identification and eradication of bee diseases and who can issue health clearance certificates for owners wishing to move hives into New South Wales. Control of the use of antibiotics against bee diseases will be investigated through the Pesticides Act 1989, although I think that is legislation that is targeted for repeal.

I know that one of the concerns expressed by the Beekeepers Association has been the proposal to drop the requirement for compulsory registration of apiaries. It is my view that it is appropriate not to continue with a legislative scheme for registration, for a couple of reasons. One is that apparently a large number of beekeepers do not register their bees anyway, and in those circumstances the lack of capacity to enforce a policy across the whole industry has to be therefore called into question. The second and perhaps more important reason, though, is that the list of registered apiaries, as far as anyone I have spoken to can recall, has never been used as a device to control or prevent bee diseases. Bee diseases have been confronted in other ways. Having some means of knowing who is keeping hives through registration has never been a particularly efficacious device to prevent those diseases from spreading. Without an up-to-date register of apiaries, registration would be of only limited value in a disease control program.

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