AHBIC recently held our AGM in Townsville.  Thank you to all who attended.  It was great to see so many observers there, as well as executive representatives from our 10 member bodies.

I was re-elected as the chair.  Thanks for your confidence in me during these challenging times. Ben McKee is to be congratulated on his re-election to the AHBIC executive. Congratulations to Cooper Schouten who was elected to the executive. For those that do not know Cooper, he is a researcher, focused on practicalities and the beekeeper’s perspective. Welcome to the team Cooper, we will be updating the executive profiles before the next newsletter in August. Stephen Fewster stepped down from the AHBIC executive. A BIG thank you to Stephen from industry and AHBIC for his accumulated 20 years of service on the AHBIC executive in various roles.

A big thank you to all that have nominated to be on one of our sub committees. A reminder to member bodies that some nominations are still outstanding. AHBIC envisages a lot more activity for the sub committees over the next 12 months. A reminder for those interested that there is a New Zealand Beekeepers conference happening this August organised by Frank Lindsay, have a look on our events page.

I attended three state Conferences, and the CEO attended the remaining state conferences.  All were well run with informative speakers and were very well attended. Congratulations to all those involved in organizing these events.  A BIG thank you to all who were successfully elected to represent their beekeeping community.  It is a big responsibility.

I look forward to working with the AHBIC team to meet the challenges of the coming year.

Stephen Targett

Chair