1Good morning, everyone.
2In today's seminar, Grant Freeman, a biologist who specialises in identifying insects,
3and who works for the Australian Quarantine Service,
4has come to talk to us about his current research work.
5Right, well, over to you, Grant.
6Good morning, everyone.
7I'm sure that you know that the quarantine service regulates all food brought into Australia.
8Well, obviously they want to protect Australia from diseases that might come in with imported goods,
9but they also want to prevent insect pests from being introduced into the country,
10and that's where I have a part to play.
11Anyway, my current research involves trying to find a particular type of bee:
12the Asian Honey Bee
13and finding out whether there are any of them around in various states of Australia.
14We discovered a few of them in Queensland once and eradicated them.
15Now, we're pretty keen to make sure that there aren't any more getting in,
16particularly to New South Wales and other states.
17What's wrong with Asian Honey Bees?
18Are they so different from Australian bees?
19Well, in fact, they look almost the same,
20but they are infested with mites -
21microscopic creatures which live on them,
22and which can seriously damage our own home-grown bees, or could even wipe them out.
23Well, what would happen if Australian bees died out?
24Well, the honey from Australian bees is of excellent quality,
25much better than the stuff the Asian bees produce.
26In fact, Australia exports native Queen bees to a large number of countries because of this.
27When the European Honey Bee was first discovered out in the bush,
28we found they made really unpleasant honey
29and they were also too big to pollinate many of our native flowers here in Australia.
30That must have had a devastating effect on the natural flora.
31Did you lose any species?
32No, we managed to get them under control before that happened
33but if Asian bees got in there could be other consequences.
34We could lose a lot of money because you might not be aware,
35but it's estimated that native bees' pollination of flower and vegetable crops is worth 1.2 billion dollars a year.
36So in a way they're the farmer's friend.
37Oh, and another thing is, if you're stung by an Asian Honey Bee,
38it can produce an allergic reaction in some people;
39so they're much more dangerous than native bees.
40How will you know if Asian bees have entered Australia?
41We're looking at the diet of the bird called the Rainbow Bee Eater.
42The Bee Eater doesn't care what it eats, as long as they're insects.
43But the interesting thing about this bird is that we are able to analyse exactly what it eats
44and that's really helpful if we're looking for introduced insects.
45How come?
46Because insects have their skeletons outside their bodies,
47so the Bee Eaters digest the meat from the inside.
48Then they bring up all the indigestible bits of skeleton
49and, of course, the wings in a pellet -
50a small ball of waste material which they cough up.
51That sounds a bit unpleasant.
52So, how do you go about it?
53In the field, we track down the Bee Eaters and find their favourite feeding spots,
54you know, the places where the birds usually feed.
55It's here that we can find the pellets.
56We collect them up and take them back to the laboratory to examine the contents.
57How do you do that?
58The pellets are really hard, especially if they have been out in the sun for a few days
59so, first of all, we treat them by adding water to moisten them and make them softer.
60Then we pull them apart under the microscope.
61Everything's all scrunched up but we're looking for wings so we just pull them all out and straighten them.
62Then we identify them to see if we can find any Asian bee wings.
63And how many have you found?
64So far our research shows that Asian bees have not entered Australia in any number -
65it's a good result and much more reliable than trying to find live ones as evidence of introduced insects.
66Well, that's fascinating!
67Thank you, Grant, for those insights.
68I hope that you might inspire some of our students here to conduct some similar experiments.