Varroa mite management tactic too late for beekeeper's euthanised hives

Just six days ago Denille Banham and Daniel Costa were preparing to have their remaining hives euthanised, jeopardising their future in the honey industry.

Then the NSW government changed its tactics to move from eradication to management overnight, which gave them hope.

But it was bittersweet news for the Kempsey couple along with those beekeepers who had to euthanise their hives.

"Finally some common sense from the decision makers with the move from eradication phase to management," Ms Banham said.

"While we welcome the news, it's a little late for many poor innocent bees and beekeeping families.

"We knew once it got to different almond farms in NSW that the government would not have the resources to contain it.

"We feel like they should have put a pause on eradication and reassessed much earlier because all those people in Kempsey who've had hives destroyed in the past two to five weeks now know it was all for nothing.

"It hasn't achieved anything."

Since Varroa mite was first detected at the Port of Newcastle in June 2022, Ms Banham said like many beekeepers across the state they were bracing for outbreaks.

Their hives at an almond farm in Griffith were tested on August 22 but it wasn't until September 6 that they were sent their positive results via email, a day after they were euthanised.

Initially, they only found out that their hives were in the red zone from a post late August 25 on the Department of Primary Industries Facebook page.

In total they had 484 hives destroyed including their children's hives and had just 280 remaining in a red zone near home. The hives would have contained around 34 million bees.

"The communication has been poor, there was no phone call, nothing, reading on Facebook was how we found out that we were in the red zone and that we would lose our hives and it was devastating," she said.

"It was like our whole world had come out from beneath us."

The pair are first generation honey producers when Mr Costa started his business at the age of 15 with 140 hives, 23 years ago.

"We had an old Hilux ute and started from scratch splitting hives and growing the business from there," she said.

But the pair are determined to continue to regrow their business Costa Honey.

Ms Banham said it would take two years to rebuild 484 hives and be back to full production with "healthy honey flow".

She said it would take a minimum of 12 months for the woodwork, which did not include sourcing bees and Queens.

"The future of the honey industry in NSW will be a big learning curve for beekeepers," she said.

"It will be a hard slog and there will be losses but it's better than having the alternative of having your bees killed."

In the meantime, they will use organic methods for management of the Varroa mite in their remaining hives.

"We pack a lot of honey under our own brand and everything that goes out is something we would feed to our own kids, we take a lot of pride in that," she said.

As far as the government compensation goes, she says it was well under the current value of the industry.

"The figures they have for compensation was based on 12 months ago, inflation has come and it has changed since then," she said.