Nelson Varroa bee mite incursion - Update #13

22 September 2006

Biosecurity New Zealand is delaying the start of the feral baiting programme because it is been unable to obtain the necessary permission the company that owns the rights to the fipronil formulation.

Fipronil has been trialled by HortResearch and was considered to be the most successful slow acting poison to kill feral bees. Slow acting poisons are required to ensure the best kill of hives.

“This has been a very unexpected development and BNZ is working to find an alternative that can be legally used in the Nelson feral bee baiting programme. However, we believe that this setback will not impact greatly on the overall success of the elimination programme as scientists believed that next autumn would give us the greatest chance of killing the most feral beehives.

“We also intend to carry out a feral bee baiting programme in November to give the programme added effectiveness in light of our inability to bait for feral bees at this time.”

“We are mindful of the disruption that this has caused the volunteers who have spent the last two weeks preparing the bait stations and we can only apologise however their work has meant that we are ready to react much faster once we can secure an alternative poison.

“SIVCG have given us an assurance that despite their disappointment in this development they are committed to seeing the varroa elimination programme through to the end.

We are delighted that despite this setback that the group will continue to work with us to achieve the goal of eliminating varroa from the Nelson area.,

In the meantime BNZ will step up its search and destroy programme aimed at getting local residents to notify us if they are know of any feral hives. These will then be destroyed quickly.

The current campaign to get people to notify us of feral haves has been very successful with over 60 feral hives being located to date and we would be grateful for the public continued co-operation in seeking out feral hives.

The public are request to report any feral colonies to 0800 80 99 66

Contact: Tina Nixon, Senior Communications Adviser, Biosecurity New Zealand, 0-27-223 2789.