As spring flowers begin to blossom and temperatures warm up, vulnerable bee populations are beginning to emerge for what will be their busiest time of the year. La Niña
But the forecast wet La Niña conditions may present a challenge for bees foraging for pollen among limited flowering plants, in their efforts to support healthy hives and nourish hungry swarms.
Gippsland beekeeping enthusiast and educator Bill Ringin said swarming was a common occurrence in spring.
"Swarming is the natural process of bees where principally if the colony gets too crowded, the old queen and about half of the bees will decide that they're going to make another hive," the Trafalgar East man said.
Having kept bees for the past 60 years, Mr Ringin observed that bees usually stayed within a close distance of the parent hive, making communal decisions to set up camp in different locations.
"Prior to the swarm leaving the parent hive, the queen will have laid some eggs in cells called queen cells that the worker bees prepare," he said.
"That then provides the original hive with a new queen."
Only mating for a few days during her life span, the queen lays two types of eggs; an infertile egg that will hatch into a male drone bee, and a fertile egg that is fertilised with sperm stored in her abdomen which will hatch into a female worker bee.
A bee becomes a queen bee when a cell is fed a special nutritional secretion known as royal jelly, which enables the larvae to develop reproductive organs and reach a point of sexual maturity.
Mr Ringin said when those queens hatch, one of them would take over running the original colony.
Diminished ecosystems impacting bee populations
Mr Ringin said environmental changes, loss of habitat, the nutritional limitations of mono-culture species in broad acre crops, and the cumulative effects of chemicals and insecticides used in intensive agriculture, have all contributed to dwindling bee populations.
"We don't really measure how those things interact," he said.
"All we're interested in is if a particular crop looks more attractive or keeps on the shelf a little bit longer or maybe its flavour is enhanced."
"It might be of benefit to the horticulturalists or to humans, it might not be of benefit to the rest of the environmental critters that are about."
Remaining vigilant against Varroa
Australia was in the envied position of being the only country on Earth that didn't have Varroa, Mr Ringin said.
"We've had a couple of incursions into Australia but we've been able to get on top of them," he said.
But the recent re-emergence in New South Wales of the parasitic vector mite which feeds on the soft tissues of the bee is cause for concern, he said.
"You can kill Varroa by freezing it, but if you're looking at broad acre agriculture and lots of beehives about you just can't control it that way effectively," he said.
"Varroa is very good at hitching rides on bees and then interchanging from one bee to another, which can then potentially shift it from a colony that's infected to a colony that's not infected."
He said that the current medications risked compromising the overall health of the bees or contaminating the bee products, such as honey.
He also notes that Varroa mites can develop a resistance to various chemicals, only a few of which are legally approved for mass use in Australia.
"The other way of trying to address the Varroa is to look at the bees that we've got. Can we breed a bee that is either more tolerant to Varroa or Varroa resistant," he said.
Bees are typically protected from most viruses and bacteria via an exoskeleton, but the Varroa mites' ability to puncture the bees skin leaves the bee vulnerable to a viral load of bugs, viruses and bacteria.
As the mite impedes bee development, infected bees will most likely have a shorter life span, become more lethargic and susceptible to a range of health aliments.
If bees are unable to defend themselves, they risk being invaded by other bee colonies seeking to plunder their reserves, which can subsequently contract Verroa and related diseases.
Mr Ringin said the commercial European honey bees were particularly vulnerable to Varroa because they didn't evolve with the disease.
"When Varroa gets in to European honey bees, it's got a devastating effect. Over time it will kill the hive and all the hives that it gets to," he said.
Mr Ringin said it would take a concerted and vigilant effort from authorities, farmers and beekeepers to monitor and protect individual bee populations from the ongoing threat of Varroa, as researchers endeavour to find a solution.
"If you can get a biological control rather than a pharmaceutical or a chemical control, you're probably a lot better off," he said.
"A biological control will leave you with minimal residues and hopefully a greater protection to develop a tolerance."
