Deadly varroa mite found in more beehives near Vic-NSW border

The deadly varroa mite has been detected in beehives in another almond orchard in the Sunraysia region of southern NSW. 

The detection of the mite at Balranald takes the current outbreak in the Sunraysia and Riverina regions to four properties.

The mite was detected in hives at Euston, near the Victorian border, Euroley near Narrandera and Nericon near Griffith last week.

NSW Department of Primary Industries deputy chief plant protection officer Chris Anderson said like those cases, the latest detection involved hives moved for pollination.

“These are hives that were moved from Kempsey [on the NSW mid-north coast] and appear to have picked up a low level of varroa mite in Kempsey, and then they have been moved down to the almond event,” he said.

Dr Anderson said there was a “very low risk” the detection of the mite at Euston last week would lead to infestations in Victoria.

“The numbers of mites in those hives were very, very low and so we don’t expect there has been any spread,” he said.

Is eradication is still possible?

The committee overseeing the emergency response to the varroa mite outbreak will meet this Thursday to discuss whether there needs to be a change in strategy from eradication to management of varroa mite.

Dr Anderson said the NSW DPI would present data about the latest detections in the Sunraysia and Riverina regions and the results of tracing from the Kempsey outbreak.

“DPI will present the results of all that surveillance, … and the picture that forms around what’s happened at Kempsey and how that impacts the response, to that committee,” he said.

“Then the committee will make its own decisions around the ongoing technical feasibility and whether it remains beneficial from a cost perspective to continue to expend funding on an eradication approach or whether that approach should change.”

Food running out for bees

It comes at the worst possible time for beekeepers — with tens of thousands of hives in the Sunraysia region for almond pollination set to run out of food for their bees in the next week or so.

President of the Victorian Farmers Federation’s beekeeping branch Peter McDonald said the latest detection left beekeepers in a “very, very tough situation”.

“The complication we’ve got now is that we’ve got a lot of bees that are in almond farms, so a lot of bees concentrated into small areas to satisfy the need for pollination for almond crops,” he said.

“[But] the flowers are finishing, so the food source for the bees is diminishing very quickly.”

He said without a new food source, the health of the bees was at risk.

“So there’s quite a whack of bees that are caught up in this now,” he said.

Mr McDonald said his hives were due to move to a canola farm in NSW, but this was up in the air.

He said bee keepers and producers were facing a lot of uncertainty.

“It’s not just uncertainty in terms of beekeepers, but it’s also the people that rely on us that need to produce food for the country,” he said.

Can bee hives be moved?

Dr Anderson flagged that a system would be put in place to allow hives to be moved off some farms in the impacted region.

“We’ve had some fairly in-depth discussions with the industry, at the national level, and also at the local level in the Riverina and Sunraysia,” he said.

“We are having further discussions with our interstate counterparts and with the national body, just to firm up what that will look like and then we will be coming back to industry to announce that.”

The department said it was working with beekeepers and agents associated with the infested hives at almond sites, to manage risks associated with declining floral resources, including hive robbing and swarming.