Queen bee honey pot needs help

A company that offers an IVF service for bees is hoping to find a new owner to help make it profitable.

Bettabees is the country’s most advanced queen bee breeder and researcher.

It artificially inseminates queen bees in a process similar to in vitro fertilisation in humans.

Bettabees chairman Jason Marshall said the business was now for sale and was not breeding any queen bees.

Low honey prices and the high cost of doing business meant beekeeper shareholders could not afford to pay the levy prices that helped run its breeding programme, he said.

Bettabees investors would pay $7500 annual levies, which entitled them to three queens from the company breeding programme.

The company had been breeding queen bees since 2004 and did research on bee genetics.

For the breeding programme, it chose bees that had specific characteristics, like good honey production, being easy to handle and disease-resistant.

These characteristics could be passed on from one generation to another, Marshall said.

He hoped someone would buy the business and make profitable.

Professor Peter Dearden, from the University of Otago’s laboratory for evolution and development, said unlike other animals where semen could be frozen and used later, the same could not be done for bees.

This meant genetic progress would be lost if Bettabees did not continue breeding.

There were other breeders it that did artificial insemination, but it was estimated some time ago that Bettabees influenced a third of the hives in New Zealand.

It was especially influential in the South Island where it bred bees for local conditions, Dearden said.

Chief executive of Apiculture New Zealand Karin Kos said the queen bees were the most important part of any hive, because they directly affected honey production and how gentle their offspring were.

The industry had good queen breeders, but losing 18 years of research experience and intellectual property would be huge, she said.

Queen bee breeder Tommy Mercau, from Taylor Pass Honey in Blenheim, said if Bettabees shut, it would be a huge loss of genetics for the industry.

Bettabees had pure bee genetics, he said.

Many countries were allowed to import queen bees from various sources and, as a result, had mixed genetics. But New Zealand beekeepers were not allowed to import randomly, Mercau said.

Bettabees’ queen genetics stemmed from Italian stock that was imported years ago. Bettabees also operated a closed hive system and were fully aware where each of its queens’ genetics came from.

A normal queen bee cost between $50 and $70.

Bettabees could select a queen and breed it with specific male bees from a specific mother, Mercau said.

Such a queen could cost $2000, he said.

The company’s board tried to find someone to manage the company, but no-one came forward, and the decision was made to put it up for sale.