Niue Plan to Save World's Honey Bees

Niue — the isolated “Rock” of the South Pacific — might yet save the world by saving the Italian honey bee (Apis mellifera ligustica).

Its tropical 261 square kilometres could become the insect world’s equivalent of Norway’s underground seed vault on Spitsbergen, that remote Arctic island of 37,673 square kilometres. The world may need both.

Niue’s potential role surfaces from a new job advertisement:

“The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat is inviting tenders from interested English‑speaking applicants for the position of Pacific Beekeeping Enabling Environment (BEE) Coordinator.”

The consultancy is tasked with “creating an enabling environment for honey trade in the Pacific.” Details quickly descend into the familiar thicket of workplans, agro‑value chains, and performance indicators — obscuring a far more compelling story: Niue could become the planet’s only dedicated bee sanctuary, protecting one of the world’s most important strains, the Italian honey bee.

Globally, honey bees are under threat from diseases, parasites, and the spread of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) across the Northern Hemisphere. Niue hosts the last known significant and sufficiently isolated stock of Italian honey bees free of all major diseases and parasites. Its bees have become an increasingly important genetic asset, and Niue itself an ideal sanctuary site.

Since 2018, Niue — population 1600 and 2500 km from Aotearoa New Zealand where 30,000 Niueans live — has been recognised as uniquely suited to such a role: small population, limited visitor numbers, strict border controls, natural isolation, a single port, and unusually pure bee genetics. It is confirmed to be pest‑free.

Oddly enough Niue, for those who live there or visit, is all about its wild and rugged coastline; what may matter to humanity more could be Niue’s rough, plant-clad area about the size of the Scottish city of Edinburgh.