Varroa mite complacency putting billion-dollar Qld industries at risk

Varroa was found in NSW in June last year, and while there has been no official sighting in Queensland, industry is somewhat in the dark due to a lack of hive testing and data sharing by beekeepers, which is currently voluntary.

According to the latest data, only 8 per cent of the surveillance work has been officially completed.

The Queensland Beekeepers' Association says the industry should have tested about 60,000 hives since the establishment of the Queensland varroa surveillance operation, but only 5000 have been reported as being surveyed.

Beekeeping is essential to the state's fruit, vegetable and cropping industries through pollination services, contributing an estimated $2.4b to the economy each year, and an incursion could be devastating.

QBA secretary Jo Martin said there was "a really big problem out there".

"I genuinely don't have a great deal of confidence at the moment that we are free of varroa mite in Queensland," Ms Martin said.

"Every time I get a phone call from senior people within Biosecurity Queensland, my heart skips a beat, because we just don't have that data in the system to give us any confidence at the moment that we've got this thing."

Ms Martin said a lack of engagement sometimes prompted governments to reconsider their investment in an industry.

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"This is costing hundreds of millions of dollars at this point in time, and if we don't see engagement within the industry, sometimes different governments do question industry's appetite to be a part of it, so we don't want that to happen," she said.

"In order to keep your industry protected, and prevent this mite from coming in, engagement has got to increase."

She said all beekeepers should send their results to the Bee 123 online form or app or call DAF, even if no suspect mites are found.

THE lack of reporting could be down to "QR code fatigue" resulting from COVID policies, which saw people constantly having to log their movements, Ms Martin said, along with dealing with successive environmental disasters.

"I think people are battle fatigued in that space, and particularly the bee industry," she said.

"In the five years that I've done this job, we have literally gone from drought, into fires, into a global pandemic, into floods, and now straight into a national biosecurity emergency."

THE footprint of registered beekeepers in Queensland has almost doubled in the past five years, going from 4700 to 10,000.

This is partly due to people taking more of an interest in growing their own food in their backyard during, and post-COVID, QBA says.

However, Ms Martin said the growth of the recreational sector had "failed to keep up" with the educational programs in place.

"I think, on a very primary level, people don't really connect the dots unless they're sometimes very large scale commercial beekeepers that obviously have significant financial investment in their operations and broader industry," she said.

LOCKYER Valley beekeeper Marina Elliot said testing was time consuming but essential.

"For a lot of beekeepers, they're on their own, away from home, so it's just an extra bit of strain on their time," Ms Elliott said.

"Having gone down to NSW last year ... in those red zones, it is an important part of monitoring and eradication to say that we definitely don't have it. Because if we're not testing, we don't know."

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