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AQIS and Australia's honeybee industries
AQIS plays an important role in managing pest and disease risks to Australia's industries that depend on honeybees: the honey industry, worth about $60 million a year, and horticulture industries that depend on bees for pollination, worth around $2 billion a year.
Australia already has significant pests and diseases of bees, including foulbrood and chalkbrood. AQIS is particularly concerned with exotic bee species and pests and diseases that haven't become established here, including:
- exotic bee species such as Asian honeybee, giant Asian honeybee and dwarf honeybee
- exotic bee mites such as varroa mite, tropilaelaps mite and tracheal mite. These mites would significantly affect European honeybee hives and can cause the death of hives.
Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy
AQIS’s Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (NAQS) works with Indonesia, Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea to obtain early warning of emerging pest and disease threats, including exotic honeybees and exotic bee pests and diseases. AQIS collaborates with overseas authorities in pest and disease surveillance in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
In addition, AQIS carries out surveillance activities in the Torres Strait and coastal areas of northern Australia from Cairns to Broome to monitor for incursions of exotic bees and pests and diseases of European honey bees. Honey bees are sampled when they are foraging flowering plants to confirm they are species of local honey bee and that they are in good health.
Stringent import conditions
Australia has very stringent import conditions to manage the risk of exotic pests and diseases being introduced with legally imported bees.
AQIS’s detector dogs are trained to respond to more than 30 scents associated with quarantine risk materials, from meat to plant material, birds, reptiles and eggs—and live bees.
While attempts to smuggle bees are uncommon, AQIS detector dogs have made some surprising finds in recent years—like the queen bee and attendants concealed in a specially modified fountain pen. Unfortunately, smuggled bees can also be carrying hitch-hikers such as varroa or tracheal mites, or the comb material used to keep them alive could contain pests such as small hive beetle, which is believed to have entered Australia with smuggled bees.
Monitoring air and sea ports
AQIS works with State and Territory agriculture authorities to monitor air and sea ports around Australia for feral bees that could arrive on cargo ships or planes: over recent years close to 20 bee colonies that could have introduced exotic bees or parasites have been found and eradicated.
The National Sentinel Hive Program also maintains hives at 29 seaports around Australia. These hives are inspected regularly for several species of mites, including varroa and tracheal mites.