Anxiety high among NSW beekeepers as questions remain about a future with varroa mite

The nation’s peak beekeeping industry body says anxiety is high in the sector — three months after NSW walked away from trying to eradicate the deadly varroa mite.

The NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) led efforts for 15 months to try to rid Australia of the bee parasite before that goal was considered unattainable. 

Australia was previously the only major honey-producing country in the world free of varroa.

The eradication efforts saw billions of bees euthanased and hive movements restricted in infested areas.

Three months after announcing the transition from eradication to managing the pest, beekeepers are still left wanting answers.

Australian Honey Bee Industry Council chief executive Danny Le Feuvre said the impact of varroa had been “unmeasurable” and many felt unprepared for what was ahead.

“It would be devastating, particularly having to make the sacrifice for industry and then deciding that it’s not achievable,” he said.

“A lot of beekeepers have re-established but there are still beekeepers who haven’t and are assessing whether they will continue or leave the industry.”

Mr Le Feuvre said education and training would be the key to returning confidence to the industry.

“To help beekeepers get a good understanding, get them prepared, get them comfortable, and be able to devise a plan for their businesses moving forward,” he said.

“Until they have that training, there is a lot of anxiety out there and a lot of beekeepers who are not sure exactly how they’re going to manage the pest.”

“[They won’t] invest more in their businesses until they are comfortable they can manage it and they really understand what the impacts will be.”

He says a number of beekeepers will choose to retire or leave the industry because of “those additional costs that they’ll have to incur to manage the pest”.

Varroa mite spreading

DPI deputy incident controller for the varroa mite response Shannon Mulholland said “a significant level of training” would be rolled out in the new year and the spread since the management decision was made had been “slow and measured”.

Dr Mulholland was anticipating that pace to continue in 2024, “which is ideal because that buys time for the industry to upskill and get prepared for managing varroa in areas where it currently isn’t present”.

“There’s an opportunity now to understand the risk pathways, understand how the mite is breeding, operating, moving through the environment and we can use that as part of that ongoing management strategy as beekeepers start to adopt varroa into their integrated pest management strategies moving forward.”

Dr Mulholland said the eradication phase was currently being wound up and, without those efforts, it was unlikely the mites would remain contained to NSW.

“If we hadn’t had those movement restrictions in place and we hadn’t had that eradication phase, we would be seeing widespread varroa across NSW and potentially even interstate by this stage,” she said.

A small number of new detections had been made around already infested premises, including in parts of the Hunter and Mid North Coast regions, and into the Sydney Basin, which Dr Mulholland said was not surprising. 

The DPI said more than 46,000 hives had been euthanased in total, which amounted to billions of bees.

Dr Mulholland said some beekeepers had recently opted for the voluntary euthanasia of hives.

“We acknowledge that there were impacts to beekeepers in certain zones, where they had been made to stand still for a period of time that potentially resulted in damage to the hives or swarms absconding from those hives,” she said.

“So we … put the offer to industry, if they still wished for us to euthanase those hives, dispose of the material and then they could seek the owner reimbursement claim process.

“We’re busily working through having the owner reimbursement claims finalised by the end of the year.”