Three years after varroa mite first crossed into hives near Narrabri and Tamworth, the parasite has become a permanent part of farming life in the New England. National horticulture and bee industry leaders are now urging growers to budget for pollination instead of relying on it for free.
Despite desperate attempts to eradicate the highly destructive pest that has decimated bee populations around the world, Varroa destructor is now established across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT. Only Western Australia and Tasmania remain free of the pest.
The national Transition to Management program, which aimed to contain the mite, concluded in February 2026. Its end confirmed what many beekeepers already suspected: varroa is here to stay, and the cost of pollination has changed for good.
The news follows a recent ABC Landline report on the toll varroa is taking on pollination across the country, including the decline of feral honeybee populations many crops have relied on for free.
For the New England, the mite’s arrival is not new. In September 2023, NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) tracing uncovered a new infestation at Cuttabri, near Narrabri, adding to two sites already found north of Tamworth. The number of infested properties across the state had reached 250.
At the time, NSW DPI Chief Plant Protection Officer Shane Hetherington said the discovery would be unwelcome news for local beekeepers.
“We know this news will be disappointing and worrying to beekeepers in the New England region who have been free from Varroa until now, but we are confident we have discovered the infestation quickly, and our surveillance will give us a good picture of any other spread,” Mr Hetherington said.
“Our teams are rapidly following all movements from the Kempsey zones and we ask the community to continue working with us as we track down the source of this cluster which is behind so many of these new IPs.”
That cluster was part of the same outbreak that put Australia on alert in 2022, when varroa mite was first detected in a sentinel hive at the Port of Newcastle. A federal investigation into the source has since ruled out illegal importation, but could not confirm exactly where or how long the pest had been in the country before it was found.
Now, with eradication abandoned in favour of long term management, the NFF Horticulture Council and the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council (AHBIC) say growers need to start treating pollination as a managed cost.
“For decades, a large share of horticulture’s pollination has come from feral bees that growers never had to think about, let alone pay for,” said Richard Shannon, Executive Officer of the NFF Horticulture Council.
“Varroa is steadily removing that invisible workforce.
“The growers who likely fare best from here will be the ones who treat pollination as a managed input, planned, budgeted and contracted, rather than something the landscape provides for free.”
AHBIC Chief Executive Officer Danny Le Feuvre said the impact reached well beyond beekeeping.
“This is not just a beekeeping problem, it is a national food production and resilience issue,” Mr Le Feuvre said.
“Beekeepers are doing everything they can to keep healthy, strong hives in the system, but they are now carrying permanent management costs and the added pressure of emerging chemical resistance.
“Growers and beekeepers are in this together, and securing pollination for Australia’s horticulture industries depends on us planning side by side.”
The NFF Horticulture Council and AHBIC will co-host a national webinar for growers on managing pollination in a varroa-endemic Australia, running from 12pm to 1.30pm AEST on Wednesday, 5 August. The session will cover what the end of the Transition to Management program means on farm and how to structure pollination agreements. Register for this event here.
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