The Australasian Beekeeper

Gretchen made an outstanding contribution to the Australian Beekeeping Industry in a very unassuming way, through her support and involvement in bee breeding. Her involvement in the Australian beekeeping industry stretched back well beyond 30 years. By the mid 1970s, Gretchen was well established as a leading supplier of untested queens to the industry and the export market. Two of her markets were Iran and Afghanistan. She was invited to visit both countries in the mid 1970s. In Australia and overseas, her attention to detail, quality, and customer service were to become known and respected. Her interest in bee breeding had also progressed to the point of acquiring AI equipment and the task of learning the technique, so her aspirations as a breeder would be fulfilled.

In 1976, the Queensland Agricultural College, responding to the initiative of Graham Kleinschmidt, senior lecturer in apiculture, and John Guilfoyle, sponsored a bee breeding school at the college under the tutelage of Professor Jersey Woyke of Poland and Dr Vern Sisson of the USA. Gretchen played an important part in this exercise, both as an assistant to Graham and the tutors, and as a contributor to the outcome of discussion which created the pathways by which was achieved the establishment of Commonwealth quarantine facilities for honeybees at Wallgrove, Sydney, and the conduct of a research project at the Hawkesbury Agricultural College (HAC), the aim of which was to establish a honeybee improvement program for Australian beekeepers.

In 1977 the world-renowned German geneticist and bee breeding scientist Professor Frederich Ruttner visited Australia and met Gretchen. Impressed by Gretchen’s ability and attention to detail, he invited Gretchen to enrol at the Institute for Beekeeping at the Oberusel University at Frankfurt for advanced tuition in bee breeding, including AI technique. In July 1978, Gretchen arrived at the Oberusel University to attend the course. It was also in 1978 that Gretchen purchased her Richmond property, close to the Hawkesbury Agricultural College (now the University of Western Sydney). She established new premises on the property, which included a state of the art laboratory, specially adapted for the artificial insemination of queen bees, a facility and service provided by Gretchen that has been in considerable demand by beekeepers interested in breeding, researchers, the University of Western Sydney, overseas colleagues and clients, constantly since that time.

In 1981 she became centrally involved in a Summer School in bee breeding at the HAC. An outcome of the school was that it brought together some of the world’s leading experts in bee breeding with Australian counterparts and researchers, resulting in an exchange of information and ideas, and cooperation between them for many years. During this period, Gretchen visited European bee breeding institutions on several occasions, to expand her knowledge, and to bring back to Australia ideas and information which could assist bee breeding in Australia. In 1986 the Honey Research Committee established the Eastern States Bee Breeding project at HAC, modelled on closed population breeding principles, and based on 30 lines recruited from the USA, New Zealand and from within Australia. In 1987, the Honey Research and Development Committee funded the Western Australian bee improvement program. Tilly Kuhnert visited Australia for four successive years until 1992, working with Gretchen to provide all the AI required to maintain both programs.

At the end of the 1980s, Gretchen decided to close down her queen rearing business in order to concentrate on the horticulture enterprise and to maintain her involvement in bee breeding and research. Her vision for an Australian bee breeding and research facility, sponsored by the industry as an institution, and geared to the systematic genetic improvement of stock, was never very far from the surface, and culminated in 2009 with the formation of the Wheen Foundation. In December 2009 Sue Cobey came from the US to teach schools in Queen Insemination at Gretchen’s property at Richmond.

In spite of advancing years, and the accompanying physical limitations that eventually come to us all in one way or another, Gretchen’s enthusiasm for the industry and for the craft of beekeeping remained undiminished.

The Industry will remember Gretchen as a person who dedicated her life to the Australian Beekeeping Industry, and is an Industry diminished by her passing.