Authorities are closely monitoring any impact on Queensland's bee populations amid a "worrying" interstate detection of the deadly honey bee parasite, varroa destructor.
Biosecurity orders are in place across New South Wales after the varroa destructor — commonly called the varroa mite — was detected at the Port of Newcastle, triggering a halt on all movement of bees across the state.
Queensland Agriculture Minister Mark Furner told the ABC he had spoken to his federal counterpart and industry leaders and the situation had "potential" to threaten the state's bee industry.
"Biosecurity Queensland is communicating with industry to keep them updated on appropriate measures," Mr Furner said.
"We are watching this very closely, because it does have the potential for impacts on our agricultural industry.
Varroa mites were found at the Port of Townsville in 2016 and again in 2019, sparking a national eradication program, but the outbreak was declared eradicated last year.
Bee researcher from the University of Queensland's school of biological sciences, Tobias Smith, said the latest outbreak would have "flow-on effects" to the rest of Australia.
"This is very worrying news — in some ways, it's been inevitable. We're one of the only places in the world that doesn't have [varroa mites]," Dr Smith said.
"For the European honey bee industry, it will change things dramatically if it becomes established.
"It will make the jobs of European honey beekeepers much harder. It'll make it more expensive, and it will have flow-on effects with pollination and honey for the rest of Australia."
'Plan bee'
Dr Smith said that, while stingless Australian bees were not susceptible to the varroa destructor, there was still cause for concern.
"Something that can happen — when you have populations of honey bees with varroa mite, they have a higher abundance of viruses … and there's evidence some of those can spill over to native bees," Dr Smith said.
"It's possible we could get more unhealthy native bees if we have more unhealthy European honey bees as a result of [the varroa mite outbreak].
"With these unknown questions about how European honey bee diseases can affect native bees, there is some need to be concerned."
Australia's bee populations are also under threat from habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change.
Native Australian stingless bees are powerful pollinators and have long been referred to as a "plan bee" for crop pollination — a backstop against the loss or decline of European honey bee populations.
However, Dr Smith said that "relatively little" was known about the biology and ecology of Australian stingless bees, and their importance was often underestimated.
"A lot of the food we eat comes from pollination [by] bees and some of that comes from native bees. So, if you care about being alive, you should be caring about native bees.
"In tropical and sub-tropical Australia, native stingless bees are probably one of the most important groups of pollinators out there in our ecosystems, keeping the bush alive through pollination and … they are really good pollinators for a range of different crops.
"We know much less about stingless bees compared to European honey bees.
"When we look at the threats to stingless bees — are they in decline or are they not — we really just don't know, because we don't have the data of how many there were in the past compared to today."
Citizen science project
To try to find out more about native stingless bees — and particularly how they reproduce — scientists at the University of Queensland have launched a new citizen science project.
They are calling on people — and schools — with backyard hives to register them and start monitoring "bee behaviour" at the hive entrance.
Dr Smith said the project aimed to build a long-term dataset of the bees, using simple observations of hives being kept in Australian backyards or known native colonies.
"We are trying to delve deeply into the reproductive biology of native stingless bees and, to do that, we need to observe as many different colonies as we can for as long as we possibly can," Dr Smith said.
"It's as easy as watching the hive's entrance for three minutes a week and recording some information about the bee behaviour you can see.
"We'll be looking for signs [that] it may be reproducing and establishing a new, daughter colony.
"This tells us a colony is strong, well-established and the environmental conditions are suitable."
Dr Smith said the project's website would help citizen scientists identify if their stingless bee colony was thriving.
"When conditions are favourable and there's lots of flowers around, they'll quietly go about pollinating … and giving you something to admire and love in your backyard," he said.
