"That's a total slap in the face for us."

Beekeepers who are battling a mysterious ailment that led to the disappearance of millions of honeybees now fear the sting of imported Australian bees that they worry could out-compete their hives and might carry a deadly parasite unseen in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has allowed shipments of Australian bees to resume despite concerns by some of its own scientists.

Australia had been shipping the insects across the Pacific for four years to replace hives devastated by the perplexing colony collapse disorder.
But six weeks ago the Australian government abruptly stopped the shipments, saying it could no longer be certain the hives were free of a smaller, aggressive bee that has infested areas near the Great Barrier Reef, U.S. officials said.

Early this month, the USDA decided to permit the bee shipments to resume with some precautions, and the first planeloads arrived in San Francisco last Monday.

Beekeeper Ken Haff of Mandan, N.D., says he fears the foreign hives could kill off his apiary.
"We've got enough problems with our own bee diseases that we don't know how to treat, and they open the border to a whole new species that could carry God knows what," said Haff, a vice president of the American Honey Producers Association. "That's a total slap in the face for us."

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Well, Ken what else did you expect from the shrub and the cabal and their sycophantic repugicans in the eleventh hour?! A caress and a peck on the cheek!

If the Australians themselves halted the shipments in the first place then one would think they had reason to believe they were 'unsafe' but that cut into some repugican's pockets so 'safety' be damned ... the almighty dollar in their pockets trumps everything you know.