Beehive eradication nearly saw the Costas lose their livelihoods, but this week’s decision spares them

The Costa family was expecting to no longer have a beekeeping business by the end of the week.

Of their nearly 800 hives, nearly 500 had been subjected to forced euthanasia and their remaining hives were slated for disposal.

The decision to destroy the broods was part of a state government response to the varroa mite incursion, which authorities believed had the potential to decimate Australia’s commercial honey bee industry.

But while the family understood the reasoning, it was especially difficult for them when their children’s hives were caught up in the eradication blitz.

“We had 480 [hives] destroyed on an almond farm at Griffith two weeks before the decision to go to management,” owner Denille Banham said. 

“Then last week they destroyed our kids’ four hives at the shed, and that was really heartbreaking.”

The Kempsey-based apiarist said the past 15 months since the deadly bee parasite was found in sentinel hives at the Port of Newcastle has been a time of heightened stress for industry members.

But a decision made on Tuesday night by the National Management Group to transition from eradication to management of the mite has been welcome news to many.

“We feel all the hives destroyed in the past month, it’s just been in vain. [That’s] 480 hives for us. That’s two-thirds of our business,” Ms Banham said.

“And to not be compensated fairly for that income that’s now lost, cause it’s going to take quite a while to rebuild those hives.”

For the Costa family, the decision was a relief. It’s meant their remaining 280 hives would now be spared.

But she says the transition to management is a “little too late” for many beekeeping families.

Period of high anxiety and stress

Ms Banham said both she and her partner Daniel have been negatively impacted by the varroa mite response.

“We’ve both been experiencing a lot of anxiety, stress, mental health issues,” she said.

“It’s been extremely difficult to deal with this while having two young kids and trying to shelter them from what’s happening to our lives.”

Ms Banham said she questioned the Department of Primary Industry’s (DPI) decision to pursue mite eradication.

“We feel that once the spread of the mite was found in the almond orchards, that the DPI wouldn’t have the resources to be able to keep up with the eradication,” she said.

“We feel at that time they should have paused and reassessed the situation and stopped eradicating hives and took a breath as such.

“That would have prevented a lot of hives needlessly being destroyed.”

Ms Banham said that it was just as well the decision to stop eradication was finally made.

“There would have been people that could have been looking at suiciding because of the toll it’s been having on their families and their finances, their mental health,” she said.

“This is gonna take a long time for a lot of beekeeping families to get over. The mental trauma will be long-lasting.”

Traumatic period for beekeepers 

Amateur beekeeper Mara Rogers was hours away from the forced euthanasia of her hives when a phone call from authorities brought news that left her overwhelmed with relief.

Beekeepers in the Kempsey region, where she lives on the New South Wales’ Mid North Coast, have euthanised more than 600 hives across the local red zone since mid-August in a bid to eradicate varroa mite.

“I had tears of joy that my girls, my bees could be saved,” she said.

Ms Rogers also believes the decision to abandon the eradication program should have come much sooner.

“I think it would have been so much less stressful for a lot of beekeepers,” she said.

“We’ve got so many families whose lives are directly impacted financially and emotionally through the loss of their bees.

Millions of bees lost

Commercial beekeeper Ted O’Donnell was also close to having his entire stock of hives euthanased.

“It would have been just devastating to know that after all these years we wouldn’t have had a box of bees to our name,” he said.

“Now with treatment maybe we will lose some in the future, but we’ve still got the bees. We’ve got something to work [with] and something to look forward to.

“It’s a great sigh of a relief because ever since it first happened, I’ve been not with it. And for the DPI to say we’re going to treatment, I was overwhelmed.”

He said he had been notified by the department that his hives in the red zone at Crescent Head in the Kempsey cluster would be euthanased.

“We’d already lost nearly 180 hives at Narrandera and we were looking at losing another 120 or so at Crescent Head. If that was to happen I’d be just completely gutted,” he said.

The fourth-generation beekeeper said the move to management has taken a huge weight off his shoulders.

“We’ve been through other problems with diseases and hive beetle and everything, and we’ve always seemed to manage. I think management will be much similar, we’ll just have to learn to live with it,” he said.