I'm sure you know that the quarantine service regulates all the food brought into Australia. This is because it is important to protect you and everyone else here in Australia from diseases that might come with imported goods. Also, and this is where I come in; we want to prevent pests, particularly insects from being introduced into the country. My current research involves trying to find a particular type of bee. The Asian Honey Bee, to be exact, and I'm currently trying to find out if there are any to be found in any part of Australia. We have discovered a small population in Queensland which was eradicated. Now, we're very keen to make sure that there aren't any more getting in. Now, you're probably wondering what is wrong with the Asian Honey Bee and how it is different from Australian bees. Actually, there is not much difference between the two as they look very similar. However, the Asian bees are infested with mites — microscopic creatures which live on them and these mites can seriously damage our own home-grown bees, potentially wiping them out. If this were to happen, the quality of the honey which Australia produces Will suffer. The Australian bees produce a honey of excellent quality and this is much better than what the Asian bees produce. In fact, Australia exports native queen bees to a number of countries because of this. When the European Honey Bee was first discovered.