Feasibility study – Commercial bee hive and honey traceability system

Summary

This project is funded through a grant secured from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. The National Beehive Traceability System Feasibility Grant is a part of the Australian Trade Support System – Cultivating Australia’s Traceability – Promoting and Protecting Australian Premium Agriculture measure. The measure supports ongoing development, implementation and improvement of supply chain traceability systems and arrangement for Australian agricultural exports, and to enable market access.

Investment into the viability of a national beehive traceability system is key to addressing:

resilient supply chains in the face of climate change, and to respond rapidly to biosecurity incursions and broader economic shocks,
data standardisation to enable interoperability of systems, including consistency issues of location identifiers across jurisdictions,
enabling efficient tracing or provenance to increase trust in Brand Australia.

Program

Honey Bee

Research Organisation

Integrity Compliance Solutions

Objective Summary

This grant aims to enhance the preparedness of the honey bee industry for exotic bee pests, provide support for international trade and protect the pollination reliant industries from the impacts of an exotic bee pest incursion. The key objectives to come out of the project are:

Build a strong collaborative research and development agenda for beehive traceability to lift our understanding of, and responses to, risks and opportunities.
Deliver a feasibility study of a national beehive traceability system in Australia to ensure readiness in the case of an exotic or endemic pest or disease establishes, keeping business costs level (for monitoring, cultural practices, additional chemical use and labour), productivity (yield and/or colony performance) and market access.
Identify current and potential beehive tracking and tracing capabilities to advance biosecurity and food safety responses, export opportunities, and confidence in Australian bee products.
Support data standardisation to enable interoperability of beehive traceability systems, including legal considerations, consistency of location identifiers across jurisdictions for beehives, regulatory compliance and risk management.