LITTLE Star Bee Sanctuary in Missabotti is playing a leading role in ensuring the Mid North Coast is home to a thriving population of Australian native bees, an endeavour set to become more important than ever if varroa mite, a parasite that is deadly to European honey bees, becomes established in Australia.

The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI) is optimistic Australia is on track to become the first country in the world to eradicate an incursion of varroa mites, which have spread to more than 100 premises across New South Wales since they were detected in Newcastle in June 2022.

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However the eradication program is ongoing and, regardless of the outcome, some experts say it’s a matter of when, not if, varroa mites become established in Australia, devastating the beekeeping industry and wiping out about 90 percent of our wild European honey bee population.

As well as the general environmental impact of this and the toll on beekeepers, there are major implications for areas like the Nambucca Valley, because honey bees play an important role in pollinating crops like avocados, macadamias and blueberries, among many others.

“If varroa mite were to establish in NSW, it will spread rapidly across Australia within a matter of years and heavily infest both managed beehives and wild honey bee colonies,” said Chris Anderson, NSW DPI plant biosecurity response program lead.

“As European honey bee populations are reduced, the pollination services they provide will also significantly decline.

“This would result in a $70m annual loss to the Australian honey industry and major impacts on producers of crops…that rely on pollination from European honey bees.

“Australia currently does not have enough hives to make up for the loss of wild colonies should varroa escape and it may be many years until sufficient numbers can be built up in locations where they are needed to ensure farmers are able to maintain their current yields.”

In August, the NSW DPI began euthanising all managed hives within designated ‘red zones’, which span the ten-kilometre radius surrounding the detection of any hives with varroa mites.

With all managed hives from infested properties and 97 percent of reported hives from the surrounding red zones now destroyed, the NSW DPI has begun the baiting and removal of wild European honey bees in these areas.

Ongoing surveillance “continues to confirm that varroa mite is contained and limited to the red zones” and this has “boosted confidence in the likelihood of eradication”, Anderson said.

“NSW DPI continues to work with industry to identify and consider strategies for pollination in areas affected by the removal of managed and wild European honey bees, which may include the use of native bees,” he added, noting that “varroa mite does not present a risk to native bees and native bees are not a carrier of the mite”.

Little Star Bee Sanctuary, which Steven and Trudi Hayes established in Missabotti in 2009, has helped give NSW a head start on building a native bee population that could fill some of the pollination gaps created by varroa mites.

The sanctuary is home to about 100 European honey bee hives and 40 native bee hives along with at least a dozen solitary native bee species living naturally on the property, and the Hayes family runs educational programs including on-site workshops and a project that began two years ago with the goal of placing 100 stingless native bee hives in 100 schools across the Mid North Coast.

“The project’s going great, we have almost half of the hives now rolled out in 100 schools between Grafton and Port Macquarie and the feedback has been fabulous,” Steven said.

“They’re just really cool to have around. They enrich your life. Anyone who opens up their life to bees, it will definitely enrich their life in some way or another.”

The Little Star team is watching the varroa mite situation closely and researching management practices in preparation, but there are limited options that are keeping with the sanctuary’s natural beekeeping principles and, even for those who use chemical management practices, the parasite creates significant challenges.

“You can live with varroa mite and honey bees, it just comes down to management practices.

“The most common method is a combination of fumigation sprays and miticide traps.

“It’s just a lot more management on the beekeeper side and colony losses are of course a part of it,” Steven said.

“If you want to be a beekeeper, ultimately you do have to become a bee loser, like anything in farming, and traditionally anywhere from five to ten percent loss of your colony numbers in a year is kind of industry standard… but with varroa mites, even with all the management practices, you can lose up to 50 percent of your colonies every year.”

Despite “some really great efforts by the industries and a lot of individuals and organisations in Australia to really do everything we can to try to bring this incursion back under control”, Steven said it’s unlikely Australia will remain free of varroa mite forever.

“We’re the last country on the planet not to have varroa mite and in a perfect world, the amount of biosecurity efforts should really be ramped up to maximum effort, if you ask me, but there’s only so much you can do, with the globalisation of transport and the movement of people around the globe, it’s probably only a matter of when, not if,” he said.

While varroa mite will almost completely wipe out our wild honey bees if it becomes established, Australian beekeepers will find ways to maintain managed honey bee hives, as beekeepers in other countries have done, but it becomes “a constant battle of keeping your numbers up” and will likely lead to some deciding it’s not worth continuing in the face of increased work and overheads, Steven said.

However he noted “that does actually open up opportunities for new beekeepers to come into the industry, people who kind of don’t know any better and think that’s just the way it is, all this extra breeding and management that we have to do” and that prices for honey and pollination services usually increase as a result of varroa mite, which can provide some compensation for those who do persist.

“Opportunities do happen. It’s a matter of evolving and changing,” he said.

By Brooke LEWIS