Beekeepers at loggerheads over varroa eradication policy

Now beekeepers are at loggerheads over whether the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) should stop trying to contain the invasive bee parasite, and start learning to live with it.

In less than a year, Australia has gone from the only continent on earth not battling for its bees, to seeing varroa as the biggest threat to Australia's honey and agriculture industries.

Absent controls, varroa typically results in the collapse of a bee colony within four years, as it slowly drains strength from and introduces disease to larvae.

Chair of the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council Stephen Targett said varroa is likely to continue threatening supplies of honey, and pollinators.

"We're not containing it as well as we'd like to - it's looking serious with the red and purple [infection and containment] covering a lot of miles now," he said.

"It's going to take quite a few years for mites to spread to high levels across the country and seriously affect bees.

"Beekeepers in unaffected states are pushing eradicate, but the beekeepers that are being affected financially, a majority of them are saying, well, maybe we need to transition to management and learn to live with it."

Since detection at sentinel hives in Newcastle, varroa mite has been detected at hives more than 1000km away in the Riverina and Sunraysia region - right on the Victorian border.

Debate has raged among apiarists about whether it is possible to eradicate the mite in Australia, and whether the cure is worse than the parasite.

DPI has already ordered the destruction of over 28,000 hives, euthanising millions of bees in the process.

Beekeepers are now suing the NSW Government for $140 million dollars in compensation, saying the existing scheme is inadequate.

Last Friday, Class action lawyer Stewart Levitt said apiarists said the government's attempts to stop the march of varroa across was pointless, and had never been achieved anywhere else in the world.

"They're not only destroying the beekeepers, they're also threatening other industries in the agricultural and horticultural sector," he said.

"They're doing it because of misguided and misconceived optimism which wasn't accompanied by a fair and just attitude to compensation."

Horticultural crops like fruit and nuts need pollinators for affective food production. More than half of agricultural pollination in Australia is performed by European honeybees, most of which come from apiarists.

The movement of hives from Kempsey to assist with the pollination of horticultural crops - especially almonds - has been blamed for the spread of the mite South.

But some beekeepers view this as putting greed ahead of Australia's biosecurity, and say DPI should have had stopped hives from being moved altogether to control the spread.

Mr Targett said it's difficult to weigh biosecurity and the immediate needs of the agriculture industry against each other.

He said while he understands the grief of apiarists who have had their hives destroyed, he doesn't see there were any other options available for people whose livelihoods rely on the supply of pollinators.

"If all those bees stayed still, that would really slow the spread of varroa, but commercial beekeepers can't make any money keeping their bees in one location," he said.

"The almond industry is a billion dollar industry, and needs a lot of bees - around 100,000 - to get a crop .

"At the time they were moved, no mites had been detected in Kempsey."

Tracing the movement of varroa across Australia presents similar challenges to the COVID-19 response.

By the time mites are detected, they have often already been moved from the place where they were infected, leaving DPI to effectively contact trace them.

With limited resources and a large land area to cover, it would be nearly impossible for them to pick up infections at the time they occur.

This problem is not unique to Australia.

When varroa was first detected on the North Island of New Zealand in 2000, it rapidly spread across the country, tearing the industry apart in the process.

By 2006, it had reached the South Island. By 2016, the war was lost, and it could be found almost everywhere in the country.

The conflict between the need for pollinators for the agriculture industry, and risks presented by varroa mite resulted in the entire country being infected within ten years.

Mr Targett said that although it remains "technically feasible" to contain this outbreak, it's unlikely it will be Australia's last.

He said the debate about whether Australia needs to learn to live with this new pest remains lively, and ongoing.

"There's meetings this week discussing whether it's still technically feasible to eradicate, and there'll be a lot of people round the table," he said.

"It's still technically feasible to eradicate, but can we practically? That's a different question, and I think the answers to those might be different.

"If we keep eradicating hives every time we find varroa, pretty soon we won't have enough pollinators to pollinate all those other crops ... so it has a huge impact on regional Australia, not just the beekeepers involved."

DPI launched a $132 million response to varroa mite, almost immediately after it was detected at sentinel hives near the Port of Newcastle.

Their stated intent is to eradicate the mite by 2026.

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