Trevor Palmer-Jones
Trevor Palmer-Jones was New Zealand’s chief beekeeping scientist for more than thirty years. His influence on the beekeeping industry was profound. He was, within the confines of a government-funded research role, responsive to the beekeeping industry and its evolving requirements, while remaining consistent in his opposition to both bee importations and the use of antibiotics for the treatment of AFB.
Palmer-Jones was born in 1910 and raised in Otago. His secondary school years were in Wanganui, where his father was the manager of the Wanganui newspaper. He attended the University of Victoria, and then Otago University. He had the intention to become a doctor. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1920s, he went back home to Wanganui to be with her. He returned to Otago University afterward, but changed his degree to chemistry and zoology.
In early 1933 he received his degree. Entering the job market with a chance to use his degree was a big ask as economic depression settled over New Zealand. So Trevor became a beekeeper…
He worked for Walworth Industries, at that time the largest beekeeping operation in New Zealand, with more than 4,000 hives. Joe Walworth had started the enterprise, and was followed by his son-in-law Les Furness. The hives were spread over most of the central and southern North Island, with the company based in Palmerston North. It is not clear how many years Trevor worked for Walworths. He may have started as a youngster and worked there through holiday periods before becoming full-time from 1933. Based on some photographs from the time, he is likely to have worked with Keith Schofield and Cliff Bird, both well-known figures in the industry in later years.
In 1936, Palmer-Jones got a chance to use his academic qualification – he was employed by Wallaceville Research Station to study mastitis. When the war broke out, he joined the RNZAF, but was then assigned to a private company to make use of his laboratory experience and capability in the war effort.
When Palmer-Jones returned to Wallaceville in 1944, he was given a unique opportunity. He was appointed as the chief beekeeper scientist, a new position, by WK Dallas, the Director of the Horticulture Division of the Department of Agriculture. Palmer-Jones would be based at the Wallaceville Research facility in Upper Hutt, reporting to the superintendent (with whom he had done research into mastitis). The position was to “connect” with the Director of Horticulture and the district apiary instructors, providing a close link to the beekeepers and their ideas of what research work needed to be done. Trevor was 34 years old, and he would carry out research relating to bees, honey and beekeeping for the next 31 years.
Palmer-Jones met Claire Reppen, a German native, in the late 1940s, and they married soon after.
Through the late 1940s, 50s, 60s and the beginning of the 1970s, Palmer-Jones’ work ranged across a wide range of apicultural topics. He showed an early interest in the use of agricultural pesticides and their potential to poison bees if used improperly. He was also the first to warn beekeepers of the dangers of arsenic-treated timber. He studied the artificial insemination of queen bees, the production of mead and royal jelly, methods to reduce excess honey moisture, the use of pollen supplements, the identification of poisonous honey (tutu honeydew) and the impacts of bee pests and diseases generally on New Zealand bees.
He also investigated a range of crops and their pollination requirements in the specific New Zealand context, including white clover, lucerne, Montgomery red clover, sunflowers and chou mollier. The last such work he did in the early 1970s was with kiwifruit, and it was his “8 hives per hectare” recommendation that prevailed for more than 20 years through the development of the kiwifruit industry.
While he is also credited with much of the research work relating to identifying the source of poisonous honey in the 1940s, it was not without controversy. Another scientist involved in the work, MD Sutherland, disputed aspects of Palmer-Jones’ work from that time. And in later years, the testing for tutin resulted in a major incident with a North Island packer (Lloyd Holt, Springfield Honey, Ngongotaha) who had packed honey impounded for fear that it was contaminated with potentially toxic honey containing tutin.
Palmer-Jones was a consistent opponent of bee importations. He felt the risks of pest and disease importation outweighed the value of new genetic stock. In his role as the primary apicultural scientist of New Zealand, he was called on to allow some imports, as it was the wish of the industry generally, but he often expressed fear of the introduction of acarine disease in particular. The quarantine system he developed involved all approved queen imports coming directly to him at Wallaceville. Attendant workers were killed and carefully inspected, and the queens remained in quarantine for some time to minimise the risks of any pests or diseases that may have arrived with them. Between 1948 and 1956, he oversaw the importation of four consignments of queens from the US, one from Canada, and three from Australia. In total, thirty-one queens were imported over this period, the last legal importations of live honey bees into New Zealand. He was concerned at the rapid increases in air travel and transport, and worried that a smuggled-in queen could bring acarine or other pests/diseases that would disadvantage the future of the beekeeping industry.
Palmer-Jones was very clearly opposed to the use of sulfathiazole in beehives, which was being taken up in the US and other countries. His opposition was primarily on the basis that none such antibiotics were effective against the spore stage of AFB, and their use would simply suppress the symptoms.
Palmer-Jones made two significant overseas trips in the middle 1950s. The first, in 1955, saw him visit bee research facilities in Italy, France, Switzerland, the US and the UK, where he spent several months at Rothamsted in England working with Dr CG Butler and his team, studying their research methods and systems. He also visited Brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey, and discussed with him the problems of ling and manuka honey, as they are both thixotropic in nature.
The Honey Marketing Authority funded part of his travels, with Palmer-Jones doing some investigations into the Fiche Test, which had been used to (falsely!) determine that some NZ honey had been adulterated. He also checked the condition of NZ comb honey in various types of packaging, with a view to setting standards for the NZ exporters to ensure safe delivery of the delicate product.
The second overseas trip was described as for personal and family reasons. He and Claire travelled through Australia, Greece and Germany. He described much of what he did as a “busman’s holiday”, given that visiting beekeepers and research facilities was at the core of much that they did.
He once said he was not the one to make beekeeping industry policy, but rather provide the scientific information needed to do so. In fact, his recommendations were almost always accepted by the beekeepers.
Palmer-Jones worked closely with several of the apicultural advisory officers. Both Ivor Forster and Roy Paterson were involved with Palmer-Jones on a number of the projects. From 1964, the last 10 years of Palmer-Jones’ research, he was joined by Pat Clinch at Wallaceville. The decision to create such a position had been made nearly a decade previously. Over time it resulted in Ivor Forster being able to do more practical beekeeping research, rather than simply being an advisory officer/inspector.
Palmer-Jones was a skilled photographer, and many of his talks in the earlier years were illustrated with slides he had taken. He developed some sort of device to produce better close-up photographs of bees visiting flowers.
Palmer-Jones retired in April 1975, about the same time as Ivor Forster, one of his primary research collaborators. He had been made a Life Member of the National Beekeepers’ Assn at the Palmerston North conference in 1974. He delivered his last research report at the 1975 NBA conference in Timaru.
Trevor Palmer-Jones and his wife Claire continued to live in Wellington until his death in 1993. Several years before he died, he included a number of provisions in his will, should his wife die before him. As well as provisions for various family and friends, he planned for donations to:
- Vegetarian Society, Wellington
- The Samaritan Service, Wellington
- The Animal Rescue Service, Upper Hutt
- The Anthroposophical Society of New Zealand
- Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Service, Wellington
- The Antivivisection Society
He asked that his body be cremated “at minimum cost”, and that Schubert’s “Rosamunde Quartet, 3rd movement”, be played when his ashes were scattered “on a sheltered garden”.
As it happened, Claire survived Trevor by about 20 years. Upon her death, a scholarship was set up for the University of Victoria, intended primarily for adults returning to tertiary study, and experiencing financial hardship. Claire had very much valued the opportunity to study at the university as an adult.