Farewell to a 127‑Year Voice: The Australasian Beekeeper

Marking the final October 2025 issue—and what comes next for Australian apiculture.

By Mike Allerton

With the October 2025 issue, The Australasian Beekeeper (ABK) brings down the curtain on a publication that tracked, sometimes drove, every major turn in our craft since Federation. Founded in July 1899 by William Samuel Pender, ABK began as a practical, industry‑minded journal and kept that DNA across generations of editors and readers.

From the start, ABK was plugged into the beating heart of Australian apiculture. In the early decades it served as an “official organ” for multiple state bodies and associations, giving beekeepers a national forum for technique, trade, and policy long before social media or email lists existed. That national brief, uniting commercial operators and amateurs remained its through‑line.

Editors shape a magazine’s soul, and ABK’s editor list reads like a roll‑call of Australian beekeeping. After Pender (1899–1931) came P. C. Blackett (1931–1934) and then the marathon tenure of Morris Morgan (1934–1975), with Hugh Langwell stepping in as relieving editor during the war years (1942–1944). Bill Winner (1975–1991) bridged into a more mechanised era; Robert “Bob” Gulliford (1991–2007) stewarded the magazine through early globalisation and the rise of queen‑breeding science. Des Cannon took the reins in 2008 and modernised the voice for a rapidly diversifying readership, before Christine Joannides took over in July 2019, fittingly as ABK marked 120 years. Des returned in 2020 through late 2021, followed by Dr Anna Carrucan from December 2021. Most recently, editor Kris Fricke has steered the magazine into its final stretch.

That continuity mattered. ABK was always independent of national and state associations, a feature, not a bug, yet it consistently reached almost the entire commercial sector and a large slice of hobbyists. In other words, if you wanted to talk to Australian beekeeping, you published in ABK.

Over its lifespan, the magazine chronicled a craft that reinvented itself several times over. The early twentieth‑century pages documented the Langstroth frame becoming standard and extracted honey eclipsing comb sales. Mid‑century issues followed the rise of migratory beekeeping, crop pollination markets, and the mechanisation that let operators truck bees across vast distances. By the 1990s and 2000s, ABK’s pages were grappling with residue standards, adulteration scandals, global honey flows, industrial queen‑breeding, and the first rumblings of biosecurity risks that would come to define the 2020s.

Then came the pivot none of us wanted but all of us have had to face: Varroa. The mite’s first Australian detection in 2022 shattered our lucky‑country exceptionalism; the national program’s move in 2023–24 from eradication to transition‑to‑management put every beekeeper on a new learning curve. ABK reported and debated that shift in real time, through news, letters, and analysis, handing beekeepers a sane, steadying voice as policy and practice scrambled to catch up.

If you flick through recent issues, you see that balance: flora features for planning forage seasons, technique pieces pitched to both sideliners and pros, and a steady stream of industry updates that treated readers like adults. In 2025, ABK was still publishing monthly digital editions, vol. 127, proving the brand could adapt formats without losing its core brief.

Anniversaries gave the team reason to look back. The 120‑year milestone in 2019 coincided with an editorship handover and a conscious effort to widen the lens to new hobbyists without dumbing things down—a hard needle to thread that ABK generally threaded well. And the 125‑year celebrations underscored a simple truth: the magazine outlasted empires, technologies, and several beekeeping orthodoxies because it stayed useful.

So what, exactly, are we losing? First, a shared archive of incremental problem‑solving—the sort you only get when practitioners write for practitioners month after month. Second, an independent national marketplace of ideas where methods could be argued on their merits rather than their marketing budgets. And third, a training ground: countless writers cut their teeth by explaining a tricky grafting process, a better pallet system, or a new sampling protocol to their peers.

What comes next shouldn’t be nostalgia‑soaked. The information economy is ruthless. Print is expensive. Attention is scarce. But the need ABK met hasn’t vanished. If anything, post‑Varroa Australia needs more high‑signal, field‑tested, locally relevant guidance—delivered where beekeepers actually are. That’s the challenge for all of us: ABA, state clubs, commercial outfits, educators, and independent writers.

Here are three blunt takeaways worth carrying forward:

• Keep it independent, keep it honest. ABK’s credibility came from not being a house organ. Our channels, newsletters, websites, webinars, should preserve that editorial distance and say the quiet parts out loud when policy or products miss the mark.
• Archive like it matters - because it does. A century of answers is only useful if it’s findable. Clubs and associations should prioritise capturing, indexing, and preserving Australian content, ABK’s included, so a new beekeeper in 2030 can still learn from a 1998 article that nails a perennial problem.
• Match the moment. The transition‑to‑management era demands nimble publishing: quick turnarounds on monitoring and treatment updates, practical management case studies, and region‑specific forage intel. That fits a modern, digital Amateur Beekeeper, paired with talks, podcasts, and short how‑to videos, so long as we protect editorial rigour.

A magazine’s last issue is not the end of a conversation. It’s a handover. ABK’s editors, from Pender and Morgan to Winner, Gulliford, Cannon, Joannides, Carrucan, and in these final months, Fricke, kept a national voice alive for 127 years. The responsibility now shifts to the rest of us to keep the signal high, the advice practical, and the flame lit.

Author note

I‘ve had the privilege to contribute a couple of pieces to ABK and Fellow ABA member Alan Wade (Canberra Regional Beekeepers) has written many thoughtful, well-researched articles over the years.