SOME of Victoria's apiarists wax lyrical about their profession, SARAH HUDSON reports

For Lindsay Callaway, beekeeping is a bitter-sweet profession.

"I do love the lifestyle, it's idyllic. I love being out in the bush in my swag with just my kit and camp oven, living out of a tuckerbox," says the fifth-generation beekeeper from Myers Flat, near Bendigo.

"But it is itinerant work. It can be hard on your family. I'm away for weeks at a time, which makes home life disjointed. I miss out on the kids' routines."

Lindsay's family has been running Warral Honey for more than 100 years, originally started by Lindsay's great-great-grandfather, Edward Teague Penglase, in Bairnsdale, before his father, Roger, moved to their current property in the 1960s.

Lindsay and his wife, Helen, have two children: Joy, 9, and Teague, 5, with high hopes they'll be the next generation for Warral Honey.

"I've done this my whole life. My earliest memories are helping dad build nucleus (or baby) hives.

"I just had my little fella out with me today in his little bee suit. It made me remember when that happened to me."

Lindsay is part of a league of Australian apiarists who criss-cross the countryside and say they produce some of the most chemical and disease-free product in the world, which some producers predict will become a luxury item in the future.

In a good year, Lindsay's 1000 hives dotted around the state's pollinating trees on farms and in national parks, collect about 100 tonnes of liquid gold in a 400km radius - from Deniliquin, across to Hamilton and down to Daylesford.

Recently, though, the honey trade has been more bitter than sweet, Lindsay says.

Thanks to the bushfires and long-running drought, the amount of pollinating trees has been harder to find, which has forced Lindsay to travel as far as Batemans Bay, in NSW, to find trees.

Thankfully, the varroa mite, which wrecked havoc on the New Zealand apiary business in the early-2000s, has not struck in Australia.

"It's been difficult the last few years and it's thanks to good luck and good management that I'm doing all right," Lindsay says.

"But I really do love it. There's so many different aspects to beekeeping from wax refining, pollinating, removal and extract to tree identification and food handling and you get to meet some great landowners."

Terry Goode, who has been an apiarist all his life and now runs Goode's Honey in Bairnsdale, predicts honey will soon become a luxury item.

"I think it's a dying industry because so much of the resource is disappearing. Some of our prime-producing, top-quality honey trees are being logged in this area," he says.

"The last three or four years have been particularly rough on beekeepers, with the drought and bushfires. Some of those areas won't recover and others will take as long as 30 years to recover.

"It's seen in the fact we're now importing honey."

Despite this, he says he wouldn't trade jobs with anyone.

"Once you are involved with bees, you can't get out. It's in your blood," Terry says .

"I think it's the thrill of the find. You never know what will be there."

Castlemaine beekeeper Peter McDonald's family business - R and E McDonald - has been operating for 60 years, making about 200 tonnes of the runny stuff annually - much of it going to iconic Beechworth Honey - from about 2500 hives, located mainly around Mildura.

He agrees that the bushfire, drought and reduction in access to pollinating trees have made the industry difficult, but he wouldn't change the lifestyle for quids.

"You work for yourself so you've got control over your own life," Peter says.

"If you want to work hard and make money you can, or you can relax and just get by.

"Travel can be a pain sometimes, but most of the time I just love travelling the countryside and meeting different people.

"I spent a lot of my childhood among the red gums of the Murray, sticking my finger in honey and eating it.

"I have a joke with my brothers and sister to try to convince them to work in the business. I tell them a bee change is better than a sea change or a tree change."

Peter and his father, Bob, teach beekeeping at Bendigo TAFE, with Peter's specialty the varroa mite, after he took part in a study tour of New Zealand.

He says there is a growing trend for honey appreciation among food lovers.

"Each one has got its own characteristics, flavours, colours and origins. It's a bit like wine," Peter says.

"Yellow box is the most popular because it has a sweet, mild taste.

"Red gum is my preferred honey because it's stronger."

Peter says one downside to the business can be stings.

Like all apiarists, he's lost count of the amount of times he's been stung.

But his mother, Eileen, the secretary of the Bendigo Apiarists Association, developed an allergy several years ago.

"For years she had no worries, but then there was a time that she was away from the business and came back after a while. It was when she came back that she developed an allergy and nearly died," Peter says.

"She had to go through a desensitisation process that gave her minute doses of venom to build her back up so she could cope with it."

  • Contact Warral Honey at www.warralhoney.com.au or (03) 5446 8655; Goode's Honey, (03) 51522 180; R and E McDonald, honey sales, Maldon Rd, Castlemaine, (03) 5472 2161.

How sweet it is

THERE are about 9600 registered beekeepers and about 250 commercial beekeepers who produce about 62 per cent of Australia's honey.

Bees work from sunrise to sunset, as long as temperatures are over 14C.

Bees have been in Australia since 1822. European settlers brought the honey bees to produce honey to eat and to help pollinate their crops.

A worker bee must fly the equivalent (relative to humans) of three times around the globe to gather about 500g of honey.

This is likely to involve more than 10,000 flower visits or perhaps 500 foraging trips.

A healthy colony of bees can produce from 150kg to 200kg of honey a year.

A single hive contains about 40.000 to 45,000 bees.

Source: Beechworth Honey