- The varroa mite, a parasite that feeds on adult bees and their larvae, is spreading rapidly in parts of NSW.
- The government needs to consider a change in approach, as the situation is getting out of control.
- The NSW Nationals leader calls for abandoning the eradication plan, as no country has been successful in eliminating the parasite once established.
- The majority of members in the Honey Bee Industry Council want to switch to a management plan instead of eradication.
- The Tasmanian Beekeepers Association believes that the pest should not be allowed to spread beyond NSW, as eradication is becoming increasingly challenging.
Paul stamets and a WSU team recently came up with a simple, safe, effective way to fight and prevent varroa mite infestations:
https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2021/05/27/fungus-fights-mites-harm-honey-bees/
Effective against mites, safe for bees
Wow that’s looking promising
Yea, I think stamets found this fungal relationship like a decade ago when colony collapse was in all the news, but now they can produce a strain that performs similarly on the cheap - hell of a lot cheaper than losing all our bees, anyway
Thank you for that contribution. Hopefully someone involved gets on to that.
For sure. And if nothing else, the masses can always give their elected representatives a call.
We’ll add it to the list. Once we get the Top 5 land clearing sorted with just a couple of phone calls!
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. This is us.
The new conservative catchcry will be “honey toast” instead of avocado.
So stuff the rest of the country?
If we can’t stop easily to spot plants from slowly moving, it’s hard to stop something that can do 5km very quickly and is basically invisible.
