Beekeepers with hives stuck in varroa mite purple zones on almond orchards in southern NSW will now be able to move them out. Around 44,000 hives had been stranded in the 25-kilometre surveillance zones surrounding Euroley and Nericon in the Riverina and Euston and Balranald in the Sunraysia where a small number of hives were found to have the deadly parasite.
After consultation with industry and other state governments, the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) has changed its emergency order to allow the hive movement subject to a number of conditions. "It is safe for those bees to be moved out. They will be subject to special surveillance requirements moving forward," DPI deputy chief protection officer Chris Anderson said. "That risk assessment is based on their potential exposure to mites and their distance from [infected premises]."
Australian Honeybee Industry Council chief executive Danny Le Feuvre said some of those hives would move as soon as tonight. "Flowering has completed in a number of those areas and the bees are sitting there and they are hungry and they do need to move," Le Feuvre said. "When the bees run out of the resources, which is what's happening now, they will start attacking each other and fighting and eventually stealing from each other when they kill the hive."
Source: abc.net.au
