Learnings for NSW as varroa spreads further during the build-up phase.
With varroa now becoming far more prevalent in both QLD and Victoria (and possibly other states too) it is very helpful for beekeepers to take stock of what has been seen in NSW.
Both NSW Varroa Development and Bee Biosecurity Officers (BBO) have been engaging intensively with beekeepers, some of whom just wanted to proactively learn about varroa before it became an issue to their own bees, and others who’s bees have been absolutely decimated by varroa and desperately needed help to save the last of their live colonies. Recently one BBO recovered nearly 1200 mites off 280 bees from a colony in the last days of its life. The owner of that hive had done very little to actively manage varroa and was using a home-made sugar shaker that was not effective for accurate monitoring purposes. When varroa arrives, there will be many beekeepers who lose hives and become a major bee biosecurity threat to every other beekeeper around them, simply because they do not take varroa management seriously enough.
Just about anybody that keeps bees loves them. Whether you are a recreational beekeeper with just 1 hive because you want bees to pollinate the backyard and produce a few kg’s of honey, or semi-commercial running five to ten or more hives and you are actively generating income, or fully commercial where you are running hundreds of hives as a business, pollinating commercial crops, driving your bees long distances and producing many tonnes of honey. The reasons that we all keep bees vary considerably, but one way or another we all love our bees.
The impact that varroa is having on every single beekeeper is profound, and if a beekeeper is not alert to the dangers from varroa then no matter how many hives you have, you and your beloved bees are going to suffer tremendously.
The reality of the NSW situation is every single colony of bees will eventually pick up mites because no hives are immune. We’ve seen a repeated pattern where one beekeeper or a VDO/BBO finds mites in an area and alerts the community, resulting in neighbours finding it very quickly after that (because sadly very few were actually looking before that the wakeup call).
Apart from a very few exceptions where only a single mite arrived to an area and took 1-2 years to build up, the varroa build-up phase experience for the rest of us is that varroa is very quickly breeding up in EVERY colony in the area as it spreads, because there is an expanding front from the now billions upon billions of varroa mite breeding up in Australia. As infested colonies start to fail all of the mites from each get spread out to every other nearby colony that is still actively foraging or robbing. Beekeepers managing their hives well (doing alcohol washes and using miticides when they need to) will be astounded by the waves of varroa that seem to come and go as natural selection firstly takes out the unmanaged and neglected hives, and feral colonies in that big first long wave, and then the poorly but still somewhat managed hives over a longer period after that.
For many that also means increased numbers of small hive beetle (SHB), as they are breeding up in the varroa impacted colonies too. Sometimes SHB will only start after the colony has basically died out, but mostly they are just attacking any colony as its health weakens from increasing varroa feeding impacts. There may still be lots of bees in your colony, but if they are feeling crook from our many established bee viruses then SHB will roll them in a matter of hours.
There is strong resistance amongst some sections of the beekeeping community to using synthetic miticides, fearing the chemicals are bad and will harm the bees, contaminate the honey, wax and the rest of the hive. From my perspective as a NSW beekeeper who has been managing varroa for almost 2 years now (and kept most of my hives alive) I firmly believe these products are by far the best and most effective long-term treatments for killing varroa at this point in time. They appear to have the least overall negative health impacts on the hive (or beekeeper), and from a time management perspective are the easiest and most effective to use over a long period of time. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so when your hives are battling and suffering huge and debilitating health effects or losses due to waves of varroa then synthetic miticides should be your main go-to products.
I would much rather use them in a hive (and keep it alive, productive and healthy) than use something that is currently less effective and suited for the varroa build-up phase (doesn’t kill mites nearly as well, or for as long a duration, and possibly the product itself causes the hive to die), and as a result have small hive beetle slime it out as soon as they were weak enough. A slime out is in my opinion a far more dangerously contaminated hive to clean up (or burn) than a colony being treated and kept alive with synthetic strips.
As the waves of varroa subside in frequency and strength then things will change, but first the following key changes must occur. The overall number of feral colonies must decline, every remaining beekeeper must work extremely hard to minimise or prevent their yearly swarms (escaping swarms become untreatable feral mite bombs), those with Warre and other hive styles that traditionally can be harder to manage swarming in must work even harder to stop their swarming, in general you must manage your hives better to minimise their varroa numbers and all the poorly managed beehives/beekeepers must be wiped out. Then the non-synthetic (they are not truly organic) products will be far more effective at controlling the overall lower numbers of varroa that will be in the environment. Once your bees have survived the first waves of varroa there is nothing to stop you from moving your whole colony of “contaminated bees” onto a box of new clean foundation and destroying those old combs when the rest of that brood has hatched out. Your bees survived and you have clean bees again.
Until that future time, you should be alcohol washing regularly (probably every 3-4 weeks) to assess the current mite loads upon your hives and treating when varroa thresholds dictate, using effective miticides of different Modes of Action (MOA) to kill the mites. Include increased SHB control measures if varroa has arrived in your area.
Just like with all types of agriculture, pet care and human health, you need to use different products that kill the same targeted pest differently each time, otherwise resistance to that product will build up and it will become ineffective.
Therefore, DO NOT just use the one same miticide product (or MOA class as different product names don’t always mean different MOA) every time you are managing your mites, as either it will still cost the same amount of money but stop working very well (and your hive will die) or you will breed up resistant mites that affect every other beekeeper in Australia.
Most of the rest of the world has already reached the established phase of varroa, but not here in Australia, so don’t rely on overseas advice to keep your hives alive just yet as it is not yet relevant to our current situation. Until then you will need to regularly kill your ½ cup of bees from your hives in an alcohol wash to protect the rest of the colony. Keep your bees alive (including using the synthetic strips when necessary) and enjoy keeping them alive.
