雅思聽力:蜜蜂的相互影響 (1/4)

Good morning everyone. In today's seminar, Grant Freeman, a biologist who specialises in identifying insects, and who works for the Australian Quarantine Service, has come to talk to us about his current research work. Right, well, over to you, Grant. Good morning, everyone. I'm sure that you know that the quarantine service regulates all food brought into Australia. Well, obviously they want to protect Australia from diseases that might come in with imported goods, but they also want to prevent insect pests from being introduced into the country, and that's where I have a part to play. Anyway, my current research involves trying to find a particular type of bee, the Asian Honey Bee, and finding out whether there are any of them around in various states of Australia. We discovered a few of them in Queensland once and eradicated them. Now, we're pretty keen to make sure that there aren't any more getting in, particularly to New South Wales and other states. What's wrong with Asian Honey Bees? Are they so different from Australian bees? Well, in fact, they look almost the same, but they are infested with mites, microscopic creatures which live on them, and which can seriously damage our own home-grown bees, or could even wipe them out.