Liquid Gold Beekeeping in Willetton, Western Australia | Local business

Liquid Gold Beekeeping

Locality: Willetton, Western Australia

Phone: +61 1300 553 629

Address: 4/173 High Road 6155 Willetton, WA, Australia

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25.01.2022 Agriculture Victoria steps up surveillance after varroa mite detection 29 June 2018 Agriculture Victoria and the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture and Wate...r Resources (DAWR) are responding to a detection of varroa mite at the Port of Melbourne. The detection which was made as a ship arrived at the port and was immediately investigated and treated by DAWR. Agriculture Victoria is undertaking surveillance in the surrounding area as a precautionary measure. Australian Honeybee Industry Council representatives have been consulted in relation to the detection and are working closely with Agriculture Victoria and DAWR. Surveillance activities include the testing of established sentinel hives, the establishment of new sentinel hives and floral sweep netting which is being undertaken in the port precinct and the adjoining parkland. Laboratory results from the established sentinel hives are negative for varroa mite. For more information about varroa mite visit the Agriculture Victoria website at agriculture.vic.gov.au.

25.01.2022 What a fantastic turn out for the 3rd Australian Bee Congress at the Gold Coast. 874 delegates from 18 countries, 61 Keynote Speakers and 70 Exhibitors... over... 3 days - The theme being "Pollination & Beekeeping for the Future". Its certainly a hive of activity. I'm so thrilled to be here! We've been catching up with Bee Friends, Industry Leaders, Commercial Beekeepers, Recreational Beekeepers, Almond growers & other trainers as well as our Australian Women in Beekeeping group and its been a wonderful opportunity to put faces to names from social media. Day 1 was focused on Pollination, Pesticides, Bee Breeding & genetics. Excellent speakers sharing their research and programs. "We are the luckiest beekeepers in the whole world" Lindsay Bourke - Chair, Australian Honey Bee Industry Council (AHBIC) "The problems are not mites but systemic pesticides" David Hackenberg, Hackenberg Apiaries, Lewisburg, USA - who was the First Beekeeper to alert the world of CCD... So stay tuned for more updates as the Conference continues. Don't forget the Kallista Shop is CLOSED until 19th July 2018 - by appointment only.

24.01.2022 Shocking secrets of the food industry. bit.ly/2Q8J5uv

24.01.2022 Funny/Serious Video

23.01.2022 Coles will no longer stock Capilano Honey's controversial Allowrie product, which contains honey sourced from China and Argentina, with the supermarket chain s...aying it wants to support Australian production. Capilano has faced criticism from some local beekeepers over its use of Chinese and Argentinian honey in its Allowrie product. According to Allowrie labels the product contains 30 per cent Australian ingredients. Despite a study claiming Australian honey is contaminated, Food Standards Australia says it is safe because it's blended. Courtesy Seven News Melbourne. Ben McKee, chief executive of the ASX-listed Capilano, confirmed the change but said the company was working with Coles on a replacement. Coles is a key business partner of ours and we have worked with them to replace the Allowrie Brand with a range of new product innovations in Capilano Brand that are 100 per cent Australian honey," he said. Mr McKee said there had been no quality issues with the Allowrie range of products which, depending on the batch, contained honey sourced from China and Argentina. "The increase in Australian honey supply has also allowed Capilano to offer an increased range of 100 per cent Australian honey products to consumers," he said. Mr McKee said all Capilano branded product contained 100 per cent Australian sourced honey. A Coles spokeswoman said the supermarket was constantly reviewing its range to ensure it met the needs of its customers. We are proud to support Australian producers and the work of Australian beekeepers who do important work in pollinating plants and food crops all over the country," she said. Neil Bingley, president of the NSW Apiarists' Association and a Capilano supplier, said Coles’ decision could push prices up but was likely a positive for the local industry. It depends on the consumer, if they’re buying for price they’ll be disadvantaged. Personally I’d prefer if they’d buy Australian, but there’s nothing wrong with the [Allowrie] product," he said. Allowrie is a good quality product, offering an affordable price point for customers on a budget. Woolworths spokesman A Woolworths spokesman said it would not follow its competitor and was planning to keep the Allowrie product in its range. Woolworths is a big supporter of Australian honey, with around three quarters of the range available on our shelves consisting of 100 per cent Australian grown honey," the spokesman said. Allowrie is a good quality product, offering an affordable price point for customers on a budget. It has proved a popular choice for customers, particularly families, and will continue to be offered as part of our broader honey range. The Australian Honey Bee Industry Council has previously raised concerns about the use of imported honey but when contacted on Thursday declined to comment. Jodie Goldsworthy, founder of Capilano competitor Beechworth Honey which does not use imported blends, also welcomed the news, saying Coles’ decision was a win for Australian consumers and Australian farmers. Any day that has more Australian honey and less imported honey on Australian supermarket shelves is a good day, said Ms Goldsworthy. Capilano shares closed on Thursday at $16.70 https://www.smh.com.au//coles-takes-capilano-honey-s-impor

23.01.2022 As most people will now be aware on the final day of the 3rd Australian Bee Congress a talk was given by Professor Norberto Garcia of Apimondia followed up with... a panel discussion which included brief talks by several people including Ben McKee of Capilano Honey and David Hackenberg of Hackenberg industries in the United States. While we are not about to sugar coat any of the information, it is some what of a problem that others who have been reporting on the issues have been leaving out quite a lot of the information that was shared. To summarise Norberto’s talk briefly, global exports from China have been increasing quite significantly since 2009 in fact they have increased by 199% while it was reported their number of hives in China have only increased by 6.7% in the same time period. This raises quite a few questions about exactly how this is being achieved. Norberto discussed several international definitions of what honey is including this one from the international codex: The natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or excretions of plant sucking insects (honeydew) on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the comb to ripen and mature. Honey sold as such shall not have added to it any food ingredient, including food additives, nor shall any other additions be made other than honey no pollen or constituent particular to honey may be removed. So what does this mean? Firstly, in some countries it is common for the honey to be harvested early and artificially dehydrated, which Noberto said can increase yields up to 150%. This practice requires a process to dehydrate the honey to reduce the moisture content, which effectively reduces the yield as excess moisture is removed. Under the codex definition this honey can be viewed as being adulterated as it was not fully ripened in the comb, this form of adulteration is recognised by the FDA in the United States. Other forms of adulteration include feeding hives during a honey flow and what they call Resin Technology (a way of cheating earlier testing methods), where ingredients can be removed and masking of geographical or botanical origins can occur as pollen can be filtered out. The most commonly known form of adulteration is that of adding rice and beet syrups to honey. A practice that most of us are aware of happening overseas. Norberto told us it’s been an on going fight for years as markers to detect this were discovered and tests made, then ways to avoid detection were discovered and the process must start all over again. He also spoke about a newer test which has been developed, which uses 36 markers to test for the purity of honey, which has been created the NMR test. This test is currently able to give an indication of all 5 of the types of honey fraud listed above and was developed by analysing 19,000 honey samples. The other thing Norberto said which seems to be being ignored by many people is that in todays world of free trade, imports of many forms of agricultural products are inevitable (not what any of us really wanted to hear I don’t think). He stressed towards the end of his speech that with the right management the two can co-exist as demand for products starts to exceed availability. That it’s up to us to keep the system honest and promote the value of our product. Norberto also offered up a graph which may have surprised some people showing the details of import and export volumes from 2004 2017. While the over all trend shown in this graph for imports were increasing, from 2015 2017 the volume has steadily decreased, and from what we understand that trend is set to continue with the statistics from 2018. After Norberto finished his talk, the panel discussion began, and we heard from Ben McKee. We would like to point out that while others have been quite scathing of Ben in their reports, what won’t be known to many is that on Friday both Ben McKee and Steven Covey left the bee congress in somewhat of a hurry to assist with the rollover of one of the Medibee trucks near Tenterfield. Thankfully both of the Capilano staff which were in the truck are ok and on the road to recovery, yet it was obvious to those who were aware of events that Ben was still distracted by this event during his talk. 120 hives of bees were on the truck and Ben spent Friday salvaging what bees he could. In his speech Ben stressed the need for proper testing to be performed on all honey entering the country and the importance of more stable prices in the domestic market so beekeepers can better plan for the futures of their businesses amongst other things. These are things we need to see in the industry. We need to know that any honey entering the country is what it’s meant to be, and I am sure all of us would like to know that we are not going to see a repeat of what happened in the early 90’s when the price of our wonderful product was down as low as 60c/kg. David Hackenberg also spoke during the panel and told us of a shift starting to happen in the American supermarkets where consumers are starting to become more willing to buy American products. We believe that slowly but surely this trend is also becoming clear in the Australian food markets. We believe that this trend will continue to develop with the new labelling laws, which became mandated as of the 1st of July this year, just a few days ago. At the end of the discussion several poignant questions were asked of the panel. Firstly Ben McKee was asked whether Capilano test for C3 and C4 sugars. Ben responded that yes, Capilano do test for these amongst other things on every batch. Another question was asked about the number of companies importing honey into Australia total 37 companies import honey into Australia, and of these obviously Capilano is the best known. Norberto was also asked if he thought that there was a high likelihood of adulterated honey coming into the country, to which he said yes there was. As an industry we need to come together to take advantage of the shifts we are seeing in purchasing habits in the food industry and positively promote our high quality pure Australian product without the storm cloud in the background we are currently fighting to overcome where our product is being tarnished by the constant feed of negativity pervading social media. We need to look at the import industry, and recognise that perhaps Dr Garcia is right, and that we have little choice but to accept it, and we should consider where we want to see this product end up certainly not on the supermarket shelf if we can help it - but is there a place for this product perhaps in the manufacturing sector, allowing us to free up our high-quality product for other purposes. As for us, we will strive to ensure that the information we continue to provide you is balanced and truthful, and we will keep up our positive promotion of our great Aussie product and the hard-working beekeepers around Australia that produce it.

22.01.2022 WAAS 101 Introduction to Beekeeping course! Sunday 16 September! See link below for details.

22.01.2022 Honey show on display with much conversation!

22.01.2022 Thinking of keeping bees? This is a great article

20.01.2022 Our 4th day harvesting honey - here Mary is working another tall hive filled with honey!

19.01.2022 Agriculture Victoria has stepped up its surveillance after varroa mite was detected at the Port of Melbourne on Wednesday. Follow the link for more information,... or if you are a beekeeper near the port you can call our apiary team on (03) 9217 4166. Victorian Farmers Federation 3rd Australian Bee Congress See more

17.01.2022 In light of what has been covered in the media today we'd like to shed some light on our industry in Queensland. Some thoughts to digest while enjoying 100% Aus...tralian Honey on toast tomorrow morning. Currently Queensland Beekeepers are facing the worst drought on record. With the prospects of drought breaking rainfall not forecast to occur in the near future, times are certainly tough for the vast majority of beekeepers in Queensland. Many beekeepers across the state are working long hours and travelling great distances to ensure our bees colonies are strong and healthy so they can continue to produce the honey we all thoroughly enjoy. Our Beekeeping industry in Queensland and throughout Australia is responsible for producing the world safest honey, we are also responsible for pollinating up to 65% of the food grown in our great nation, up to 19.97 billion dollars worth actually. We are the back bone of Agriculture, so many industries in Australia are dependent on healthy bee colonies to assist in producing the healthy food we all enjoy. The Honeybee industry is now in need of your help now more than ever before, with your help we can continue to provide the worlds best honey and ensure food security for generations of Australian families to come. The easiest way for you to play your part is to simply check the country of origin label when shopping at the supermarket. By purchasing 100% Australian Honey you are buying Pure Australian Honey, you are securing the future of 4th and 5th generations of beekeeping families as well as sustaining the future of Agriculture in Australia. A decision made at the supermarket or green grocer to buy 100% Australian Honey today, is an investment in Australia food future for tomorrow. Please like our page and share this post to help spread the word. #Australianhoney #Supportbeekeepers #Australiangrown #beesecurityisfoodsecurity #healthybeesneedhealthyforests

13.01.2022 China-focused buyer bids $190 million for Capilano Honey The private equiteer husband of Jessica Rudd - daughter of the former Australian PM - is involved in a ...takeover bid for Capilano Honey. Australia's biggest honey producer, Capilano Honey, is set to be taken over by a private equity group specialising in China-focused agricultural exports. Partnering in the $190 million bid for the 65-year-old Australian company is private equity fund Wattle Hill, which was co-founded by Albert Tse, the husband of Jessica Rudd, daughter of former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd. Capilano shares jumped 25 per cent to a two-year high of $19.5 after the honey group's board endorsed an offer from a consortium composed of private equity fund Wattle Hill and investment manager Roc Partners. Read more: https://www.news.com.au///20c16423d342ea88f9e0d9da22a82b7e

12.01.2022 The boys are back ....800 boxes to extract in the new shed . Get back on that plane @toddsmetherham

08.01.2022 Save the Bees Australia

07.01.2022 What does the future hold for our kids and for their kids? With the current droughts in Australia and record temperatures around the world, do we really think c...utting down our forests for paper, firewood and other low value products is worth it? Do we really think taking away the old forests; the climate regulators, the lungs of our earth and their beauty, will assist our kids in their already inevitable mission of cleaning up the world that we are leaving for them? We need to not only become the change we want to see in the world, but the change we want to see for the sake of our children’s future. Feel free to come and get involved with us through this link > http://forestsforlife.org.au/get-involved/