MILDURA based beekeeper and broker Trevor Monson has called for calm following this week’s detection of varroa mite in Victoria for the first time.
Mr Monson said varroa was found in one hive out of a group of 1500 hives on an isolated property at Nangiloc.
He said it is “literally one mite” which has been found and he doesn’t think the industry needs to hit the panic button just yet.
These days Mr Monson only runs 800 of his own hives, but he is also coordinating the placement of 100,000 other hives on a contract basis on farms across SA, Victoria and NSW.
“Finding the mite is not a surprise to a lot of people but I think it is very premature for Agriculture Minister Ros Spence to declare the problem as endemic to Victoria just yet,” he said.
“We need to do a lot more surveillance and we can do that in the knowledge that everybody is still doing the right thing as we come to grips with varroa’s arrival in Australia.
“Perhaps one of our bigger problems is the current alcohol wash program only covers a few hundred bees amongst tens of thousands, so it is not that accurate.”
He said miticide strips inserted into hives will give an indication when testing reveals how many mites have fallen onto them.
A clearer indication will be checking if the mites start breeding here.
“If this is just an initial infection there is still a good chance to do something about it before the almond trees finish flowering,” he said.
“We might still be able to bring it under control, but when the mats go to the lab and they find more, of there is a detection in a second spot, then I might be prepared to call it.”
Victorian Agriculture Minister Ros Spence this week confirmed the Nangiloc case and said “we are managing the situation”.
“Agriculture Victoria is working with the affected beekeeper and others nearby to minimise any spread and to guide those management actions going forward,” she said.
In Australia, the last country free of varroa mite, it was first detected in NSW in 2022.
Victorian Apiarists Association president John van Weeghel agreed with Mr Monson and added the spread of varroa into Victoria was inevitable.
“It was as certain as the sun coming up tomorrow morning,” he says, adding testing here would “intensify drastically”.
But Mr Monson insists the situation must not be seen as “all doom and gloom”.
With surveillance, monitoring and treatment phases things will not be the end of the world.
“Of course we will all have to adjust, but I have been all over the world and seen how many other countries are dealing with varroa and many of them are doing a good job now,” he said.
“Even in Mongolia they are dealing with it, and when I was in Burma, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, they have been able to keep running their industry.
“The other advantage to being the last in the world to get hit, a lot of research, implementation and management work has already been done, giving us some amazing blueprints to work with.
“And Australians have shown they are so good at coming up with solutions, that with all this knowledge behind them and their own innovation, we might find an even better way to handle it all.”
Mr Monson said that with almond pollination nearing its end, many of the hives imported into Victoria will be heading to the Riverina in NSW for the canola season, giving some breathing room.
