Two years after the exotic pest Varroa destructor was detected in sentinel hives at the Port of Newcastle and began spreading throughout New South Wales, beekeepers in other states are bracing for the pest’s inevitable arrival.
It is not only commercial beekeepers in the firing line. An estimated 47,000 registered recreational beekeepers will be forced to decide whether they can continue their hobby.
Also at stake are commercial fruit crops, such as apples, pears and cherries, back yard fruit and vegetable gardens, and native forests, which rely on feral honeybees for free pollination.
Despite triggering the biggest multi-agency plant biosecurity response in Australian history, at a cost of $132m and with an estimated 30,000 hives destroyed during the first year, authorities gave up the fight to eradicate the mite 12 months ago.
Earlier this year efforts shifted to managing the parasitic mite, which can weaken bees, kill larvae and spread deadly viruses. It is expected to wipe out most wild European honey bees over the next five years.
The two-year management plan focuses on education, with 110 workshops being held across the country to give beekeepers, regardless of how many hives they have, information about the best ways to monitor and treat mite infestations.
Regulations controlling the movement of hives between states remain in place in an effort to control the spread. The mites have recently been detected at Nangiloc, near Mildura in Victoria, after first being detected across the Murray River at Balranald and Euston during the almond pollination season last year.
“We’re not trying to stop the spread … it’s inevitable,” says Danny Le Feuvre, chief executive of the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council.
“We’re just trying to slow the spread so our beekeepers can be upskilled and ready for it.”
Le Feuvre said reactions to the biosecurity response had varied, with most of the 1,800 commercial beekeepers who derive income from regularly crossing state borders to pollinate crops or gather honey from forests and wildflowers in favour of “getting on with it”.
But beekeepers who stick to their own area or state have argued that borders should have been shut and hive movements frozen for as long as possible.
Duxton Bees managing director Keegan Blignaut, who has worked in New Zealand where varroa has been endemic for 24 years, agreed its spread was inevitable.
The South Australian company is one of Australia’s biggest and sent 4,000 of its 7,000 hives to north-west Victoria and the Riverland for the almond pollination season, which runs from July to August each year.
“Our position is we know we’re going to get it,” Blignaut says.
“The reality is, within the next two years, it’ll be endemic in all commercial hives – beekeepers operating 800 or 900 hives or more – unless somebody’s operating very, very remotely.”
Beekeepers are being warned managing varroa will require extra monitoring of hives, inspecting them three times as often, and the use of chemicals costing about $55 per hive each year.
Beekeepers with fewer than 10 hives will have to inspect each one, while it will be mandatory for those with more than 10 hives to inspect 10% of their total.
They also should expect to deal with numerous reinfestations until feral honeybee populations die out, which could take five years.
Blignaut said the industry was likely to contract as hives owned by beekeepers who were unable to keep up with the extra workload, or chose not to, died out.
Experience overseas has shown hobby beekeepers, who represent about 250,000 Australian hives and produce about 10,000 tonnes of honey each year, would be the most affected by varroa.
“They don’t necessarily have the experience and the skill to manage varroa as they should,” he says.
“What’s then going to happen is other industries, such as cherries and apples, that have been dependent on free pollination from feral colonies are going to need to use a beekeeper.”
South Gippsland semi-commercial beekeeper Peter Gatehouse, who has about 80 hives at six sites, says he would probably have to reduce how many he operates because of the extra workload.
“From overseas we can see that varroa mite is possible to manage,” he says.
“In the next three years, in this build-up phase where we’re going to have reinfestation from feral colonies and unmanaged colonies, it’s going to be critical to monitor, monitor, monitor.”
Australian National University bee scientist Prof Sasha Mikheyev says there has been decades of research on varroa mite overseas, but more was needed to monitor its impact on feral honeybees which are also crucial for pollinating native forests.
“The forests have had 150 years of reliance on western honeybees at huge densities, so there could very well be some changes,” he says.
“We have a unique potential to actually get data about how our bees and our ecosystem functions pre-varroa. But this window is vanishingly short, and one issue we have is the research that needs to be done to take advantage of that window has to be done now. The honeybee industry doesn’t have money to support research, so the government is the only avenue we have.”
A spokesperson from the federal Department of Agriculture says investigations into the suspected illegal importation of live bees are continuing.
Sandra Godwin is a freelance journalist based in Swan Hill, Victoria
