From their standpoint the couple are not suffering from supermarket price squeezes or Dutch auctions. But they see dark clouds ahead for the honey bee industry.

The catastrophic Varroa Destructor mite is on Australia’s door step in New Zealand.

“Australia is reputed to have the best quality honey in the world - the chemical free honey should be treasured not taken for granted,” he said. “Our honey gets little promotion or research and young blood is not being attracted into the industry.”

Peter and Elaine are organic honey producers and have a lucrative contract to export their honey to Japan and other Asian countries.

The couple have followed the seasons with their bees for the past 30 years. A typical season starts off at The Rock in spring following the red gum from Echuca to Deniliquin and Hay around Christmas time. During the summer months it’s off to the Stringy Bark areas of Yackandandah and Benalla followed by Iron Bark and Grey Box around Bendigo in March. During winter Peter has ventured north into Queensland but it has been too dry in recent years.

“It’s hard work, - we work within a 500km radius of home out in the open during the summer’s heat,” Peter said.

This year there was no honey. The dry 2001-02 season failed too. Peter and Elaine shifted the bee hives around in an attempt to find the honey flow without any results.

Peter can remember the first year he worked as an apiarist. During the floods among the red gums at Hay, “there was so much honey I couldn’t keep up with it,” he said.

“Once we use to get a good season every two years, it’s been 10 or more years since a good season has come along.”

Spring 2008 will be telling as far as bee deaths are concerned. Through experience Peter and Elaine have learnt to keep the bees close by with water supplies and reserves of honey, hoping they will hibernate and survive the winter months.

Peter and Elaine are concerned for a future in Australia without bees.

“If the Varroa mite gets into Australia we will lose our bees and this will have a disastrous effect on food production as well as honey supplies,” he warned.

Peter’s comments were supported by a recent 60 Minutes program.

“Bees face a catastrophic threat called the Varroa Destructor, a mite that sucks the blood of bees and transmits the virus,” CSIRO researcher Dr Denis Anderson said.

Dr Anderson is working on gene technology which turns off the signal that tells the mite to breed when it is in the hive. This research project is under-funded and success, at least five years away.