[Pollinator] Hive beetles in Eastern Australia

[Peter Bernhardt]

Members must be sick and tired of the bad news in my recent messages.
Please note I attended a meeting of the Society for Insect Study at the
Australian Museum (Sydney) this evening.  It's an old-fashioned natural
history club and there is a show and tell table.  One member brought in
pickled hive beetles but also living larvae.  He noted his bottled larvae
spent 6 days in the jar and were still alive and squirming.  He also
announced that these beetles were devastating the honey industry in New
South Wales since their arrival from Southern Africa.  Apparently they will
infest Australian hives by the thousands and completely shut it down.
There's an 11,000 Australian dollar fine if you don't report an infestation
in your hive although it has been here in New South Wales since 2002.
Those who are interested may want to see the following link...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_hive_beetle

I went to the meeting because the President of the Society is a big
butterfly collector and he was presenting on  Danaeus plexippus.  They call
it the Wanderer over here and it's quite common in the Sydney Region where
people often garden with asclepiads (we saw two from the train on our way
into downtown Sydney).  Aside from Australia and Hawaii it appears to have
island hopped all over the Pacific basin in the 19th century and is well
established in New Zealand.  I saw them in New Caledonia about 15 years
ago.  It's still my theory that they became established in this part of the
world as people imported and grew milkweeds as garden and medicinal
plants.  One wonders if 19th century, British medicine took the common
names of A. tuberosa (Colic root and Pleurisy root) seriously and
encouraged their introduction in the then colonies?  Otherwise, there
aren't enough native asclepiad species native to southern, temperate
Australia to feed the caterpillars.  Most Australian asclepiads (Hoya,
Tylophora) are northern and tropical.

Peter
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