Australia is killing bees to save honey industry

The first step is pouring gasoline into the beehive. Then

it is time to wait. The job is finished when the hive is burned the next day.

Since last week, that cycle has been on repeat near a port in eastern Australia, part of a government effort to protect the country’s multimillion-dollar honey industry.

Millions of bees have been destroyed to help contain the spread of the deadly varroa mite, which reappeared in the country last week near the Port of Newcastle.

“Australia is the only major honey-producing country free from varroa mite,” said Satendra Kumar, the chief plant protection officer of New South Wales

state, where the pest was discovered June 24. If the varroa mite became established in Australia, he said, it could cost the nation’s

honey industry more than $70 million a year, in addition to its effect on the crops that rely on bee pollination.

Authorities have ordered a virtual lockdown of the beehives in

the affected area of the state. Normally, beehives are moved from place to place, a process crucial to Australia’s $15 billion horticulture industry because they are used to help pollinate crops.

The mites, which are reddishbrown and about the size of a sesame seed, can spread from

bee to bee and through beekeeping equipment, including combs that have been extracted. If left untreated, the mites could kill an entire colony of honey bees, the government has said.

It is not easy to contain the mite, with even the New South Wales government agency in charge of the eradication effort conceding that “it is generally accepted that it is inevitable that varroa mites will eventually establish in Australia.”

Still, the government is trying hard to postpone the inevitable. Previous incursions, in 2016, 2019 and 2020, are considered to have been successfully eradicated, according to the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.

One of the biggest challenges in the current containment effort is figuring out the location of infected hives and mapping their spread in a vast region, according to Danny Le Feuvre, the acting head of the Australian Honey Bee Industrial Council. It is necessary to contain the Port of Newcastle and the hives within a 31-mile radius of it, he said.

The port is a major shipping destination and one of the world’s busiest export hubs for coal.

Feuvre and his team have partnered with at least 300 beekeepers to visit farms and help authorities in their inspection drives.

They wash the hives with alcohol and use sticky mats to check whether the bees are infected with the mites.

So far, at least 600 hives, each containing about 30,000 bees, have been destroyed in the area, he said.