News & NEWSLETTERS

By NSW Government DPI. Read the original article here.

The National Varroa Mite Management Program has today announced two products containing the active ingredient oxalic acid can now be used for the treatment of Varroa mite.

The announcement follows a permit granted by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA).

At this stage the permit is for use by beekeepers in NSW and Victoria, the only states with confirmed positive detections of Varroa mite, as well as the ACT and Queensland as a pre-emptive measure for further spread of the mite. The treatment is approved only for use where Varroa mite has reached or exceeded treatment thresholds.

The permit includes two products by the same manufacturer, Api-Bioxal Solution (dribble) and Api-Bioxal Powder which both contain oxalic acid as the active ingredient.

National Varroa Transition to Management Coordinator Tamara Prentice said the permit to use these products containing oxalic acid provides another treatment option for beekeepers against Varroa mite.

“These treatments should not be viewed as a silver bullet in the fight against Varroa mite,” Ms Prentice said.

“However, when used correctly, with other cultural and mechanical controls, and as part of a rotation of approved treatments, the Api-Bioxal products can aid in reducing mite infestation.”

Ms Prentice said the permitted oxalic acid based products can be applied in the presence of bee brood and when honey supers are in place, however, are most effective when no brood is present. Api-Bioxal products must not be used simultaneously with other miticides.

“As per all chemical treatments, it’s imperative beekeepers only use the permitted Api-Bioxal treatments as per APVMA permit and label instructions and only once mite treatment thresholds have been met,” Ms Prentice said.

“When used according to permit and label directions, rotated with other treatments, and within an integrated pest management schedule, Varroa mites are less likely to build resistance to the active ingredient.”

Stocks of Api-Bioxal are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2025. Beekeepers interested in using Api-Bioxal products should contact their beekeeping supply store to enquire about local availability.

For the full list of permitted and registered Varroa mite treatments visit www.varroa.org.au/ipm.

For more information on the management of Varroa mite including mite treatment thresholds, visit www.varroa.org.au.

By Patrick Taylor. View the original article here.

West Beach Parks Golf in Adelaide have installed six bee hives on its Patawalonga Course in amongst recently revegetated native trees, bushes, and grasses.

Part of existing sustainability plans, West Beach Parks CEO Kate Anderson and her team are in the process of returning native flora to the course, and the introduction of around 50,000 European honeybees have further bolstered the course’s sustainability efforts.

Australia’s beautiful expansive spaces ensure that native flora and fauna are a highlight of many golf courses across the country, the local golf club often the first port of call if one is desperate to spot a kangaroo at short notice, however poor planning and biodiversity neglect can lead to clubs not taking full advantage of the environment their courses sit on.

The tiny new residents at West Beach Parks have been welcomed with open arms, and Anderson says it was a natural next step in their biodiversity works, after taking out non-native flora and replacing them with Australian trees and other coastal species native to the area.

“The six beehives are safely situated away from the short grass of the greens to ensure our busy bees are foraging and pollinating the 7000 native plants added to the golf course as part of our ongoing Environmental Sustainability Plan to protect and enhance local biodiversity,” said Anderson.

Directors of Adelaide Bee Sanctuary, and expert beekeepers, Jorg and Sabine Pangerl have been tasked with settling the bees in and making sure they thrive in their new environment.

Believed to be the first bee hives on a golf course in South Australia, Mr Pangerl says a golf course can be the perfect environment for bees.

“Golf courses, designed with natural habitats and conservation areas that include native plants attractive to bees, can serve as valuable habitats for these pollinators, contributing to their conservation and supporting biodiversity,” he said.

“While golfers frequent the courses, large areas of a golf course can remain relatively undisturbed, providing a peaceful environment for bees to forage.”

And as for the honey, Anderson says the first harvest was in April and more is expected to arrive from the beekeepers soon. The first jars to be shared by the hard-working West Beach Parks Golf staff. 

Authored by Daniel Johnson. Read the original article here.

If you want flowers or fruits in your garden, they'll need pollinating, and native bees are among Australia's most powerful pollinators.

In recent months there has been a mass exodus of backyard beekeepers due to the pest Varroa mite.

But because native bees are not directly impacted by the Varroa mite they are a great (and often stingless) alternative to European honey bees.

They are also facing their own fight for survival due to factors including habitat loss, overuse of insecticides, climate change and natural disasters such as the Black Summer bushfires.

So whether you're interested in the sweet benefits of backyard beekeeping, having your plants pollinated or simply helping our bees out, here are some ways to make your garden a friendly place for native bees.

Why native bees are better pollinators

There are more than 1,600 described species of native bees in Australia — most of which are solitary, meaning they don't live in hives.

Native stingless bees are a notable exception and, like European honey bees, are social and honey-producing.

Tim Heard is an entomologist and former long-time CSIRO research scientist, who now runs a Meanjin/Brisbane-based business that provides education and consulting services around native bees.

He says native bees are regarded as keystone species "that really help to make the ecosystem tick, and they do that by the pollination services they provide".

"Bees visit flowers for food, but in doing so, they cross-pollinate, so they move pollen from one individual plant to another," Dr Heard says.

Melbourne/Naarm-based founder and CEO of advocacy group Save the Bees Australia Simon Mulvany agrees, and says native bees are often better pollinators than European honey bees.

"They do a different type of pollination, which is called buzz pollination, and that means that they sort of vibrate or headbutt really, really quickly to release the pollen, whereas the honey bee uses a sort of static electricity to collect the pollen," he says.

Backyard beekeeping

But Mr Mulvany says while European honey bees produce much larger quantities of honey than native bees, there are greater responsibilities involved with keeping them.

"You do have to intervene with them a couple of times a year, at least, whereas with the native bees, you sort of can just let them do their thing," he says.

It's a sentiment echoed by Dr Heard, who adds there are other benefits to keeping native stingless bees.

"They are generally just a little bit less conspicuous, neighbours are less likely to complain about them, and … they can be used in kindergartens, schools and community gardens without any of the stinging risk."

Unlike European honey bees, you also don't need a sprawling backyard to keep native stingless bees, which will thrive in a small wooden hive in a small yard — or even on a balcony.

"You can keep them on your apartment balcony in the middle of the Gold Coast and they'll do probably very well," Dr Heard says.

"I wouldn't go more than about 10 storeys, that might get a bit far for them to fly."

Attracting native bees to your garden

If you're not ready to commit to keeping bees, there are a few things you can do to encourage them if you're interested in boosting the biodiversity of your garden.

First and foremost, Dr Heard recommends limiting your use of pesticides.

"Don't use insecticides would be the first thing I'd say, that's an easy one. Let nature survive; live and let live," he says.

Secondly, it's important to establish a suitable natural habitat, which means a suitably diverse garden that includes native plant species.

"A lawn is not habitat for many animals, it doesn't really provide much in the way of resources for many animals but a native garden, with a diversity of plants that flower, that fruit, that have flashes of new leaf growth — that will provide food and habitat for all kinds of animals, not just bees."

Dr Heard suggests eschewing large hardware chains, which "tend to go for large numbers of genetically uniform, introduced plant species", and instead consult a local nursery.

Mr Mulvany says local council websites will often have a list of locally endemic plants that will attract blue-banded bees and other native species, and councils "will sometimes give out free indigenous plants because they're the plants they want planted".

Building bee hotels is also a great way to attract solitary bees to your property, Dr Heard says, and again recommends building your own, rather than opting for a mass-produced, prefabricated version.

"Pieces of bamboo are great and mud bricks [attract] the blue-banded bees and other bees that like to nest in soil, and also chunks of timber with holes drilled in them that bees will find and build their little nests in.

"Putting in a little oasis in your yard, growing some bee-loving plants on your front footpath is definitely a useful thing to do for bee and other insect diversity." 

A Authored by Jennifer Johnston. Read the original article here.

Honey runs through Cedar Anderson’s veins. A third-generation beekeeper, the 44-year-old is at the forefront of a global movement championing bees and protecting their habitats in the face of a worldwide biodiversity crisis. In 2015, together with his father, Stuart, Cedar developed the Flow Hive, an innovative Aussie invention providing a non-invasive honey harvesting system that is gentle on bees and easy on beekeepers. Their company, Flow, has grown into a multimillion-dollar business with some 110,000 Flow Hives in use in more than 130 countries. Now it’s giving back.

As well as promoting backyard beekeeping, Flow now offers educational online courses for beekeepers and supports habitat regeneration projects worldwide. Through Flow, the Andersons have brought together a global community of like-minded people who support being kinder to bees and caring for local environments that support the flora bees need to thrive.

“Beekeeping is a gateway hobby and we’re finding people campaigning to turn neighbourhoods into safe havens where bees want to be,” Cedar says. Interest in beekeeping is growing, he adds, in part due to the influence of celebrities such as David Beckham. In the opening scene of his 2023 four-part Netflix documentary, Beckham, the soccer superstar proudly shows off honey harvested from one of his nine Flow Hives.

“We were amazed to see our Flow Hives featured in one of the biggest documentaries the world is currently watching,” Cedar says. “That shows the connection we can have with bees on a global scale, and it helps spread the message about the importance of bees to our food chain.”

Because pollinators help plants – including farm crops – reproduce, they play a crucial role in healthy food chains. But to be effective, bees and other pollinators need access to the right type of flora. So Flow has partnered with conservation and reforestation projects across the globe to protect and regenerate crucial bee habitat – helping to change the landscape for pollinating species worldwide.

“To protect the pollinators, we must protect the plants, and to protect the plants, we have to protect entire ecosystems,” Cedar says, acknowledging that all bees – not only European honeybees – are crucial for pollination and the future of healthy ecosystems.

Cedar has been beekeeping beekeeping since he was six, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. He grew up in an intentional community in northern New South Wales, where there were no TVs or electronic gadgets, and he spent his childhood building things from spare parts, like go-karts, with his siblings and friends. His father actively encouraged creative thinking.

It’s no surprise, then, that during one honey harvest, Cedar wondered if there might be a way to retrieve honey from hives that would be gentler on the bees and also reduce his chance of being stung. In 2005 he and Stuart began working on an idea. It took the duo 10 years to refine their design and build their prototype. In 2015, when Flow Hive was ready to launch, they established a crowdfunding campaign to help set up the manufacturing supply chain. “It took us by surprise when we received US$12.2 million in presales within eight weeks,” Cedar says. With initial presale orders for 24,500 Flow Hive units from 130 countries, Flow became a global phenomenon overnight. “Life hasn’t been the same since,” Stuart says.

A penchant for environmental activism runs in the Anderson family. In 1979 Cedar’s parents joined anti-logging protestors at Terania Creek, in northern NSW. “My parents were part of a landmark piece of activism – the first recorded successful rainforest blockade in the world – and I was there, in my mum’s belly,” Cedar says, smiling. During his 20s, Cedar worked for Greenpeace, flying across the Sumatran jungle in a paramotor (a powered paraglider) to document the illegal burning of orangutan habitat. Fast-forward to today, and Cedar is still an activist at heart. He recognises Flow’s potential to make a big impact on the world by tackling a pressing issue: the pollination crisis.

In a 2023 paper in the journal Ecology and Evolution entitled “Pollination crisis Down-Under: Has Australasia dodged the bullet?”, Australian native-bee scientist Dr Kit Prendergast and others raised concerns about a human-induced “pollination crisis”. Kit and her colleagues identify the major threats to plant pollinators as habitat loss, climate change, pesticide use, pathogen spread and introduced species. “Any threat to pollinators has potentially damaging consequences for human wellbeing and other biota on earth,” Kit says.

Cedar and his team are committed to tackling this by returning some of the profits from Flow Hive to support bee conservation. In 2020 the company launched thebeekeeper.org, an online beekeeping course that funds habitat regeneration projects worldwide. “We identified a need for quality education for beekeepers and to bring the global beekeeping community together,” Cedar explains. The entry-level, self-paced course is designed to take new beekeepers to a stage where they’re confident in beekeeping and includes content contributed by experts from throughout the world. Members seeking a deeper scientific knowledge can opt in to further study.

The creator of the training course was Flow’s strategy and key-projects manager, Niall Fahy. Originally from Ireland, Niall was an ecological activist in his youth. He moved to Byron Bay and approached Flow for work in 2016. “I like how Flow is a company using human ingenuity to solve problems to make the world a better place,” he says. Half the profits from the course are used to protect and create biodiverse habitats for pollinators. “We named the program Billions of Blossoms (BoB), because that’s what bees need to thrive,” Niall says. Through partnering with organisations across the globe, Flow supports projects doing quality regeneration work. “There are roughly 20,000 bee species in the world, and many may not be able to get to the next flowering space,” Cedar says. “If we plant flora to help the world’s pollinators, then we’re doing something to help save the planet.”

Cedar, Stuart, Niall and the Flow team have detailed in-depth discussions about where to disburse funds. “When carrying out reforestation, you have to ensure you’re working with good partners, that they’re planting the right species in the right places, and looking after them appropriately,” Niall says. BoB first began supporting projects in July 2021. “From the outset we chose to support a range of organisations both big and small, locally and internationally,” Niall says. “This diversity allows us to work in countries where our customers are based and also where we are likely to get more impact per dollar in regions where costs are lower.”

For example, in Madagascar, BoB works with an organisation called Eden: People+Planet, which supports planned reforestation and landscape restoration schemes. In Ecuador, in the foothills of the Andes, BoB supports the YAKUM Project, working with Indigenous communities to reforest land that was cleared for cattle. Another Ecuador-based project BoB supports, the Rainforest Information Centre (RIC), has a family connection – Stuart’s brother, Patrick, is on the board. This grassroots, volunteer-based, not-for-profit organisation partners with Indigenous and local communities battling to save the rare and beautiful cloud forests that are under constant threat from mining. By 2023 BoB had helped plant 1.5 million trees and protect thousands of hectares of biodiverse habitat, which translates to billions of blossoms for bees and other native foragers.

Flow launched a new product in 2017 called the Pollinator House, a “cosy home” for solitary bees made from upcycled timber offcuts. “Unlike European honeybees, which build hives, native bees are solitary nesting bees that need a wild space, a hole in a piece of wood or a tube of bamboo,” Stuart says. “Creating habitat in your backyard gives these bees a stepping-stone through the urban landscape. Our pollinator house may be the difference between these native pollinators being on the brink of extinction and connecting them to another wild space.” All of the profits from pollinator house sales go towards organisations working to improve pollinator health. “The funds are used to support research, charity, education and conservation projects in Australia, the USA, the UK and Africa,” Niall says. “It’s a lot of work vetting these projects, but it’s important that Flow utilises business for positive change.”

While studying for her PhD between 2016 and 2022, Kit Prendergast applied to Flow for a Pollinator Community Group Grant. She was successful and used the grant to work on a project barcoding the DNA of Australian native bees. “Australia has an estimated 2000-plus species of native bees, yet only 1660 species have been described, and it’s likely many that are described need to be revised,” Kit says. “I was able to resolve the taxonomy of two species through DNA barcoding.” She’s concerned about the future of native bees, “our unsung heroes”, and it’s not only because of habitat loss. “Another threat is the lack of investment into studying native bees and advancing their taxonomy,” she says. “Without adequate funding, some of Australia’s unique native bees will disappear before they are even recognised.”

With celebrities such as David Beckham, Jamie Oliver, Chris Hemsworth and Johanna Griggs espousing beekeeping using Flow Hives, the message about the importance of bees is being elevated. While Cedar appreciates the celebrity affirmations, it’s not what drives him and his team. “What gets us out of bed in the morning is that we are more than a business selling a product,” he says. “Inspiring beekeepers is wonderful, but what we want is to join the global community in making a difference and to repair our world.

The BSSA produces a bi-monthly magazine, Buzzword. Download edition 121 here.

Authored by: Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) - WA

Red dwarf honey bee was first detected in March 2023 on the Burrup Peninsula, near Karratha.

The bee poses a significant threat to local European honey bees and is known to be a vector for numerous exotic bee pests, including brood diseases, mites and bee viruses.

DPIRD is leading the biosecurity response to eradicate red dwarf honey bee with assistance from the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Northern Territory Department of Industry, Tourism and Trade.

A Quarantine Area remains in place for the Burrup Peninsula and to date 25 red dwarf honey bee active colonies, one swarm and 13 abandoned nests have been located and destroyed.

DPIRD plant biosecurity project manager David Cousins said the drones were being trialled as some areas on the Burrup Peninsula were difficult to access by on-ground surveillance teams.

“The drones will enable us to cover the hard to reach areas to boost surveillance efforts and check for any suspect bee colonies,” Mr Cousins said.

“We are trialling two different types of drones – one to identify water sources and map the terrain and vegetation and the other to use thermal imaging to help find nests in hard to access areas.

“As the bees are attracted to water, knowing where the fresh water sources are will help us to target surveillance to these areas.

“Mapping the terrain will provide a better picture of areas that may be difficult to access by foot.”

Mr Cousins said red dwarf honey bees were social bees and usually lived in small colonies.

“They exhibit swarm behaviour and are known to abandon their colony and relocate to a new site if conditions become unfavourable or are disturbed,” he said.

“To help track any bees that may have left a colony, new lures are also being trialled including egg yolk and sucrose syrup, water array, vane traps, bait stations and bee lining.

“The lures will be placed in areas of known red dwarf honey bee activity to identify which ones are most effective.”

Beekeepers with hives, equipment or those who have collected swarms on the peninsula are reminded they are not permitted to move them outside the Quarantine Area to prevent the pest from spreading.

Red dwarf honey bees are considerably smaller than European honey bees, just seven to 10 millimetres in length, with a red-brown abdomen and black and white bands.

Authored by: Australian Government, Department of Agriculture,  Fisheries and Forestry.

In response to the recent varroa mite outbreak, the Catalysing Australia’s Biosecurity (CAB) initiative is leading a cutting-edge partnership between the Australian Capital Territory Government, Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, University of Canberra and CSIRO, to detect varroa mites – a danger to honeybees across the globe.

A new low-cost technology, BeeRight, has been shown to detect varroa mites in beehives in New Zealand and could be the solution to slowing the spread of this destructive pest.

If varroa mites establish in Australia’s honeybee population, pollination activities would be significantly reduced, posing an extreme risk to Australia’s food security.

BeeRight technology is an Internet of Things solution that can be set up in any hive without damaging the hive or bothering the bees. The technology has the potential to monitor for:

• beehive activity
• colony strength
• queen status
• productivity
• swarming status
• hive location
• presence of disease
• when to treat hives.

Two pilot trials will take place in Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales from 1 April to 7 June 2024. The trials will collect data from hobbyist and commercial beekeepers, putting the BeeRight technology and environmental DNA (eDNA) to the test. Data collected from the sites will be analysed by a team of data scientists and entomologists to determine if BeeRight and eDNA can detect varroa.

If successful, we’ll be one step closer to slowing the spread of varroa in Australia and reducing the risk of losing hives due to the virus.

We’ll share more updates soon on this novel technology. For more information email innovationpilots@aff.gov.au. 

Author: Claire Fenwicke, Riotact

Canberrans have been chosen to take part in a trial which is aiming to change the way diseases are detected in bee hives.

As the apiary industry faces threats from varroa mite, a new technology is being trialled which would turn any hive into a self-monitoring smart hive.

Joel Kuperholz is the CEO and co-founder of Vimana Tech, which has developed the ‘BeeRight’ system.

It’s designed to be low-cost and scalable, and can let beekeepers know if their hives are healthy and active, how their queens are faring, honey levels, and if there are any biosecurity concerns or diseases present – without having to pull the hive apart.

“In order to save the bees, we believed that we had to help save the beekeeper,” Mr Kuperholz said.

“In order to do that, it means helping beekeepers manage more hives more efficiently … [This technology means] instead of doing ad hoc inspections and drive out to manually inspect that hive … you can actually monitor it and get day-by-day information.”

One part of the device slips onto the top of the hive, while the smart component is run by solar power and sits on the outside.

Mr Kuperholz said while this technology was first designed to help commercial beekeepers manage their hives more efficiently, it’s hoped this will be accessible to hobbyists and private hive owners as well.

“We have the beekeeper at the forefront of our mind, but hobbyists are really important as well. They might not have the wealth of experience that a lot of commercial operators have and they may want a little bit of help managing their hive,” he said.

“As we went on that journey … we were able to realise this product can help in the management of varroa going forward.” 

Australia is no longer trying to eradicate varroa mite, which arrived on our shores in June 2022.

A management plan has been approved with varroa development officers (VDOs) to work directly with beekeepers over the next 24 months.

Beekeepers have different opinions about how they want to treat their hives and which varroa mite detection methods they’d like to use. Most methods kill about one per cent of the bees each time.

At a government monitoring level, there are also questions about how much self-assessed inspections can be trusted.

Mr Kuperholz hoped this technology would provide a level of confidence and trust for both parties.

“This breaks norms that have existed for 30-, 40-plus years. Reading academic papers from the 70s, 80s, 90s, they all touch on alcohol washes and that’s still the known thing [to test for diseases],” he said.

“In the 70s we didn’t even have seatbelts in cars, so innovation and need for increasing safety standards exist so much in our world, and it’s really important we take that … into agriculture.”

It could also bring more reassurance to ‘pollinator rentals’ as hives are moved across the country to pollinate crops, such as almond trees.

The technology’s trial has been picked up by the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

The ACT will be used as the trial’s ‘clean’ site, as it’s known to be varroa mite free. Another pilot will be run in Kempsey in northern NSW, which is known to have the disease.

Known varroa mite detection methods and their detection rates – such as alcohol washes, sugar shakes and sticky mats – will be compared against this data.

Beekeepers who take part in the trial will be expected to take environmental DNA (eDNA) samples and submit them as part of the 10-week trial.

The University of Canberra is also on board to process the data, before the final report is written by scientists with the CSIRO assessing BeeRight’s potential to detect varroa mite.

ACT Biosecurity Coordinator Kirsten Tasker said her team would help install the devices and chase up the collection of samples in Canberra.

She also reassured the community the Territory was protected against varroa mite.

“We are still testing by other means as well, so our beekeepers are still doing alcohol washes and sugar shakes to prove freedom from varroa for the time being,” Ms Tasker said.

The report is expected later this year. 

Author: Nilima Marshall, Science Reporter

Bumblebees can teach each other to solve complex puzzles that are too difficult to learn alone through trial and error, scientists have found.

Experiments have shown the insects are able to learn a complicated puzzle box task from their peers to gain access to a sugar reward.

But when there was no help involved, individual bees struggled to complete the puzzle from scratch.

The researchers said their study, published in the journal Nature, shows bees can learn complex tasks through social interaction, challenging the long-held view that this trait is unique to humans.

To carry out the study, the scientists set up a two-step puzzle box task where the bees first had to learn how to move an obstacle before operating a rotating lid that could be opened to access a sugar solution.

The scientists trained “demonstrator” bees to complete the task, with a temporary reward at the first step.

Untrained bees learned to open the two-step box from the demonstrators without needing a reward after the first step.

However, when there were no demonstrators to show how it was done, the bees failed to solve the puzzle independently through trial and error.

Lead author Dr Alice Bridges said: “This is an extremely difficult task for bees.

“They had to learn two steps to get the reward, with the first behaviour in the sequence being unrewarded.

“We initially needed to train demonstrator bees with a temporary reward included there, highlighting the complexity.

“Yet other bees learned the whole sequence from social observation of these trained bees, even without ever experiencing the first step’s reward.

“But when we let other bees attempt to open the box without a trained bee to demonstrate the solution, they didn’t manage to open any at all.”

The team said their work “opens exciting possibilities” for understanding how cumulative culture evolved.

Cumulative culture refers to the gradual accumulation of knowledge and skills over generations, allowing for refinement of ideas, technologies, and practices though collective intelligence.

Lars Chittka, professor of sensory and behavioural ecology at Queen Mary University of London, said: “This challenges the traditional view that only humans can socially learn complex behaviour beyond individual learning.

“It raises the fascinating possibility that many of the most remarkable accomplishments of the social insects, like the nesting architectures of bees and wasps or the agricultural habits of aphid- and fungus-farming ants, may have initially spread by copying of clever innovators, before they eventually became part of the species-specific behaviour repertoires.”

Meanwhile, another study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, has shown that chimpanzees can learn a new skill by observing each other.

Scientists from the Netherlands and Belgium trained a chimpanzee to solve a puzzle box that required three steps to open to gain a food reward, and it was then able to pass on the knowledge to 14 others, among a cohort of 66.