Joining the Lost Cause, the Great Bug War
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On September 19th they declared the Great Bug War to be lost. The invasive varroa mite, which will fundamentally change the practice of beekeeping and the whole economic equation of it here, was declared un-eradicatable. The mite only travels about 6km a year on its own but commercial beekeepers are very migratory, always chasing the flow. There were no-movement zones and significant rules about the mite checks one must do before moving even outside the zones, but widespread noncompliance and rule-flouting by beekeepers is widely touted as the cause of the eradication efforts failing. And I don't mean that these rules were disapproved by beekeepers, the overwhelming majority were in favor, probably even the people that broke them as far as their application to everyone but themselves. It was selfishness and greed that caused the effort to fail. Though I also think the biosecurity departments are a bit to blame because as far as I know they've never prosecuted anyone for breaking any rules, they like to be the good guys all around but if they'd come down like a load of bricks on anyone who broke the rules there would have been much more rigorous compliance.
So it is perhaps suitably quixotic that now that the war is lost, I will be deploying into the front lines. They still need to do monitoring of where the mites are, how intensely they're spreading, etc, so I've been hired on to the emergency management teams operated by the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI). The teams have been operating for awhile but my joining them has been delayed by my travels.
Tomorrow (Monday, Sept 25th) I'll take the train 7.5 hours up to the nearest NSW DPI office in Albury, where they'll apparently have a rental car for me and I'll drive from there 5 hours to the town of Euston on the border between Victoria and NSW. This is right in the almonds, the big concern area for a super spreader event, and area of the most recent very concerning detections.
As you can see from the above map it's kind of a giant triangle but it is what it is.
I'm very grateful to my longsuffering boss who has put up with me being absent all but about six weeks since May. It wasn't so bad in mid winter but we well and truly are very busy now and I wouldn't have absented myself now for anything less than a national emergency, which it is.
We're hoping to get a no-movement zone declared within Victoria around our corner, Geelong and Werribee, as there's not really much migratory beekeeper activity here anyway so if its declared the value of protection to those within would far far outway anyone who could have a complaint about it.