Ban on queen bee imports forces Tasmania's beekeepers to hone craft in raising royalty

Tasmanian beekeepers are getting their hives ready for honey collection over summer.

Honey in the state, famous for its leatherwood variety, is valued at about $13 million a year.

To produce that liquid gold, bees need a strong and healthy hive with diverse genetics, which starts with a new queen bee.

Last year, more than 7,500 queen bees were imported into Tasmania.

But this season, biosecurity restrictions that are in place to prevent varroa mite crossing the Bass Strait from mainland Australia have put a stop to imports.

That means many of Tasmania's nearly 600 registered beekeepers will need to raise their own queens — and that can be a fiddly process.

Various groups across the state have been teaching hobby beekeepers about some of the techniques they will need to master.

Semi-commercial beekeeper David Gibson is happy to pass on his knowledge.

"Grafting your own queens is a whole different science," Mr Gibson said.

"It's very time consuming. You need a lot of patience and you need good weather."

So how is queen bee grafting done?

First, beekeepers will need to establish a new colony. They need a starter hive with nectar and pollen, an empty frame, a queen cell bar and a heap of bees.

Then they need to pick out a frame of newly hatched lava from a breeding hive.

Queen bees begin life no differently from worker bees, but it's the rate and amount of feeding — called royal jelly — from the colony that determines whether the larva will develop into a queen or a worker.

Often a colony will raise a few young queens, as an insurance population, but only one will be chosen to go on to thrive.

"It's a day's work to graft queens," Mr Gibson said.

The rest of the work is done by the bees themselves.

"[You] set the queen in the grafting bar, set the hives up and feed them," he said.

"Day 12, I normally send them out into the breeding nucleus hive.

"It takes around a month before you get a laying queen."

The queen will mate with drone bees and by the third week after the queen's virgin flight, she might start laying.

Bernd Meyer has taken up beekeeping as a retirement hobby after 40 years as a teacher.

He wants to improve his strike rate at grafting baby queens.

"As a new beekeeper I'm very anxious, like an anxious parent, " Mr Meyer said.

"My aim is to produce queens and sell them onto others."

"There's lots of people that want to get into beekeeping and I think it should be truly encouraged."

David Gibson says he gets a kick out of seeing new beekeepers build their confidence and try new techniques.

"I find it exciting for them if their interest grows and each year they try and do more and more," Mr Gibson said.

"Once the bug bites or the bees stings so to speak, it's very catching."

A spokesperson from Tasmania's Department of Natural Resources and Environment says the import restrictions on queen bees will continue beyond January as interstate varroa mite surveillence continues.