Feral bees to be baited in single red zone

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Feral bees to be baited in single red zone

Authorities will begin baiting feral bees in a single red eradication zone next week, more than three months after a varroa mite was detected at the Port of Newcastle.

While the Department of Primary Industries DPI said it had not been able to do that while there were managed hives in the zones, destroying feral hives has been a key part of the NSW government's varroa mite eradication strategy.

There's no way to know whether there is a dead hive or a live hive sitting there, chief plant protection officer Satendra Kumar said.

The DPI will use the insecticide fiprinol in baits to attract the feral European honey bees, which take the poison back to their hive.

The baiting program will start in the 10 kilometer red eradication zone of Jerry's Plains in the Hunter region, where all 19 managed hives have already been euthanased.

Kumar said the baiting stations would be monitored and could be in place for up to 12 months.

We'll do our first round then we'll come back for a number of rounds and if you're no longer attracting any bees then that's an indication that there's no more bees present, he said.

The DPI will continue euthanasing managed hives in other red zones before opening those up to feral bee baits.

A leading bee expert said that all feral bees in the red zones must be destroyed if the eradication of varroa mite is successful in Australia.

Bruce White OAMWhite OAM, who worked for the NSW DPI for more than 40 years as an apiary officer, said the challenge was to find every feral bee colony in the state's red zones.

There is a huge amount of feral bees in the area, so DPI, to combat varroa, needs to kill every feral bee in every red zone to prevent the spread of varroa in the future, he said.

Mr White said there was still a lot of bee activity in areas where managed hive had been killed, and he had seen bees working blossoms in areas where hives had been destroyed.

He said there used to be as many feral honey bees as managed bees in NSW.

There are still a lot of bees on flora, and there is evidence that many species are supposedly all being killed. Dr Kumar said he did not think the roll out of the feral bee baiting program had come too late because authorities were yet to find any mites in feral nests.

He said that there was a chance that there might be some bees carrying the mite and that we want to make sure that we get rid of those feral hives and bees, especially in the areas where the infestations of varroa mite were high.