Agriculture
Australia’s bee imports at risk due to corona pandemic
To strengthen the gene pool of its own bee colonies, Australia imports queen bees from Europe. Photo: Soeren Stache / dpa-Zenbtralbild / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Queen bees that are imported from Europe to Australia arrive weak or even dead at the recipient due to delays caused by the pandemic. Now special technology should help.
Australian beekeepers fear for the future of their animals in the face of the corona pandemic. There are still no Varroa mites on the continent that can destroy entire bee colonies. As a result, they have not developed any resistance to the pest.
However, some European bee colonies have a certain defense – they have a so-called VSH characteristic (“Varroa Sensitive Hygiene”). To strengthen the gene pool of its own bee colonies, Australia imports queen bees from Europe. However, the corona pandemic also causes a problem: delays in the mail.
Too long delivery times
“They arrive dead, they arrive stressed or they simply do not arrive at all,” the Australian broadcaster ABC recently quoted the president of the Australian association of queen bee breeders, Richard Sims. A shipment with 250 queens was missing for seven days and almost all of them died. Many regions of Australia were recently in corona lockdown for months.
Ten queen bees from the Netherlands arrived in Australia undamaged, but the journey within the country took ten days. “The bees survived, but were in a weak condition,” said breeder Corinne Jordan of the German press agency. “We have fertilized them artificially and hope that they are strong enough.” The imported bees are extremely important to arm the Australian conspecifics against the mites, even if they have not yet been detected there. “The situation can change at any time,” warned Jordan.
The hope: fewer pests
Usually every beehive has a queen who is the only one to lay eggs. In this way, the European queens with the VSH characteristic are supposed to create resilient bee colonies. Workers with the VSH trait recognize bee brood infested by the mite and remove these offspring. The pest infestation is thus reduced.
As in Europe, bees are very important as pollinators for Australian agriculture. “We now want to test new technologies to check the temperature of the boxes in which the queens are sent. And with GPS tracking we know where the deliveries are stuck, ”said Jordan.