Beehives permitted to move from almond orchard purple zones

Beekeepers with hives stuck in varroa mite purple zones on almond orchards in southern NSW will now be able to move them out. 

More than 40,000 beehives have been stranded in the 25-kilometre surveillance zones surrounding Euroley and Nericon in the Riverina and Euston and Balranald in the Sunraysia where a small number of hives were found to have the deadly parasite.

With almond pollination all but over, beekeepers need to move their livestock onto other crops needing pollination, including canola.

After consultation with industry and other state governments, the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) has changed its emergency order to allow the hive movement subject to a number of conditions.

“It is safe for those bees to be moved out. They will be subject to special surveillance requirements moving forward,” DPI deputy chief protection officer Chris Anderson said.

“That risk assessment is based on their potential exposure to mites and their distance from [infected premises].”

Australian Honeybee Industry Council chief executive Danny Le Feuvre said some of those hives would move as soon as tonight.

“Flowering has completed in a number of those areas and the bees are sitting there and they are hungry and they do need to move,” Mr Le Feuvre said.

“When the bees run out of the resources, which is what’s happening now, they will start attacking each other and fighting and eventually stealing from each other when they kill the hive.”

Mr Le Feuvre said most hives would move locally to other crops that needed pollinating but they would be tracked closely by the NSW DPI.

“They’re not just allowed to go willy-nilly. They are in a controlled fashion, so they will be treated as dangerous contact premises,” he said.

“Those bees will be tracked and they are required to do a higher rate of surveillance and alcohol washing on those bees once they move.”

Relief for beekeeper

Dubbo-based beekeeper Bryn Jones was pleased he would be able to move his 600 hives out of almond orchards in a purple zone near Griffith.

“Relief from farmers too who are waiting for the bees that are going straight to work on another job,” he said.

“Some are going up to start a cauliflower mother-seed breeding program at Narromine and others are going to hybrid-seed canola.”

Mr Jones would begin moving hives tomorrow and was confident that they were free of varroa mite.

Government accused of double standards

The changes only apply to hives in the four purple zones in the Sunraysia and Riverina and not to anywhere else in NSW.

Crop Pollination Association of Australia president Steve Fuller described the decision as “a kick in the guts” for the rest of the industry.

“There have been a lot of people tied up and commercial beekeepers in other areas who haven’t had floral resources, and that was part of the order last time,” he said.

“There’s a lot of resentment going around the industry at the moment.”

He said for beekeepers who could not move hives in the Newcastle, Nana Glen, and Narrabri regions, it felt like a double standard.

Fate of red-zone hives still in limbo

The future of an estimated 30,000 hives in the four red zones in the Sunraysia and Riverina regions, and whether they could also be moved, was yet to be decided.

“That is flagged for discussion at national meetings tomorrow and the DPI will be presenting a case that is risk-assessed. Again that will be discussed at length by technical experts,” Dr Anderson said.

“But at this point in time we can’t announce anything around those red zone hives.”

No infested hives in the red zones have been destroyed but strips have been installed to minimise the risk of transfer of mites.

Mr Le Feuvre hoped that a decision to allow beekeepers with hives in purple zones south of the border would be made by Agriculture Victoria within days.

Agriculture Victoria has been contacted for comment.

The infected hives in the Riverina and Sunraysia were from legal movements from the Kempsey region on the NSW mid-north coast.

The NSW DPI has also confirmed five new cases in the Kempsey cluster, one at Singleton and one in Newcastle, taking the total number of infested premises to 231.

The index case at Kempsey has still not been found and the origin of the cluster, which includes 22 infected premises, has not yet been identified.