It has been just over a month now since varroa mite was detected in sentinel hives at the Port of Newcastle, with millions of bees in emergency zones since euthanased.
While authorities in New South Wales remain confident the deadly parasite can be eradicated, beekeepers could soon have a new tool to help in their fight against future outbreaks.
Australian researchers are hoping to develop a world-first hormone-based pesticide, safe for honey bees but fatal to varroa mite, and another destructive pest, the small hive beetle.
The University of Sydney research project has been underway for a year, but it could be two to three years before it is ready for commercialisation.
Project lead Joel Mackay says indications are the fight against the current incursions will be successful as with previous detections in Australian ports over the past decade.
"Hopefully the same will happen now and we buy ourselves some more time through which we can develop technologies like the one that we're working on," he said.
The technology hinges on hormones and one essential hormone found in all insects and related organisms.
"Ecdysone is a hormone that controls most aspects of the development and physiology reproduction behaviour of all of these organisms, and it acts by interacting with a specific protein in the insect called the ecdyson receptor," Professor Mackay said.
The researchers hope to make molecules that interfere with the interaction between the hormone and its receptor.
"The shape of this receptor is just subtly different in different orders of insects, and different again in mites and different again in spiders and so on," Professor Mackay explained.
"[It is] similar enough that they can still interact with the hormone but different enough that we hope to be able to exploit those differences to make molecules that will hit a specific pest ecdysone receptor, but not the ecdysone receptor of beneficial insects that we choose to focus on.
"We really want to try and focus on making molecules that are selective for the ecdysone receptor of the varroa mite, but not the honey bee."
Professor Mackay said the pesticide would also be safe to native bees and other animals in the environment.
"This ecdysone hormone and the receptor protein, they're not present in any vertebrates so fish, birds, mammals, people, we don't use ecdyson and so by default makes our system much safer for other parts of the ecosystem," he said.
He is expecting a strong market for the molecule internationally.
The $1.2 million initiative has been supported by Hort Innovation Australia, La Trobe University and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.
Valuable pollinators on the move
Movement of bee hives in the low-risk blue zone has started around NSW to assist with the pollination of crops primarily almonds.
Steve Fuller, president of the NSW Apiarists' Association. said about 200 hive movement declarations have been submitted.
A group permit has also been issued for beekeepers to transit through NSW to and from Queensland, also restricted to the blue zone.
"The almond industry is very short of bees this year because Victorians can't come over the border into NSW either, so we need to get Queensland hives down there," Mr Fuller said.
The control effort has now ramped up the surveillance and the euthanasia of infected hives in the red zone.
"The ones that we are concerned about is if we find it out in the yellow then we have to reassess the situation."
