Asian Hornets – Time for MPI to Up Their Game

VIEWS FROM OUTSIDE THE APIARY: IAN FLETCHER

What to make of the hornet incursion response so far? Ian Fletcher has been among those advising the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) from the beekeeping industry’s perspective. He reports on a programme that has so far relied too much on hope, may be continuing to do so and that “the lack of a grip on this issue should concern us all”.

By Ian Fletcher

I’ve spent much of the last month engaging with MPI, beekeepers and with Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ) on the Asian hornet (aka yellow-legged hornet) incursion. This month I’m setting out what I’ve learned and what seems to me to be some lessons to learn, and things to get better. At the outset, let me say that New Zealand Beekeeping Inc (who I represent) and ApiNZ have worked closely and entirely cooperatively on this.

Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard has been urged by beekeeping groups to improve MPI’s incursion response to yellow-legged hornets (aka Asian hornets).

If Asian hornets get established in New Zealand they will spread across the whole country. They are efficient predators and they will have a happy time – like wasps. Phil Lester’s book The Vulgar Wasp has been a great introduction for me into the science around social insects like wasps and hornets. Fascinating, and worrying.

The economic, environmental and human impact will be very serious. These hornets will systematically hunt honey bees (and other insects). Hive losses in Europe to hornet predation look to average around 30 percent per year, in addition to varroa losses and American foulbrood. Unsurprisingly, weaker hives get hit hardest. It’s not clear what that would eventually look like in New Zealand, but it won’t be trivial.

That will affect pollination. I don’t know how that will work exactly (hornets may go after bees after the peak pollination periods, allowing beekeepers to disperse hives). But it will be expensive, and complicated. Honey production will be affected, with lower yields and higher costs. And Asian hornets will hit amenity values – it’ll be less fun going into the bush, and there will be stings, attacks and the occasional fatality. We don’t want any of that. Eradication is essential, everyone agrees.

So, on the ground, what’s happening? MPI and its contractors have put a lot of traps around the cluster of finds so far, and engaged in searches of properties where hornets have been found. Hornets are mainly being found by searches (workers have yet to emerge, so trapping catch will pick up soon).

The danger (matching overseas reports) is that we find hornets where we look, and we miss those where we don’t look. MPI report that it’s hard to search scrub, bush and broken country. So it is, but we should urge MPI to be both energetic and innovative: we need to find ways to search dense vegetation and broken country. Waiting for workers to emerge, and following them home (the current idea) seems to me to be a kind of gambling. Hope is not a policy.

I’m also concerned that using contractors may mean MPI’s insight into conditions on the ground may be less granular than it ought to be. This may be a counsel of perfection, or just paranoia. But only the paranoid survive, as the saying goes.

Ian Flethcer, now advising NZBI, and a past biosecurity expert with Queensland’s Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation.

So far, the number of queens found keeps rising. This trend, more than anything else, is what scientists are worried about. If queen discoveries are increasing, it suggests the population is spread further than MPI has so far detected – that we don’t really know the boundaries of the incursion.

Outside the immediate zone, trapping is left to individuals, including beekeepers. Yet we know (and the Minister has said) that hitchhiking on human transport is the way these hornets spread. I consider we have to assume they have spread beyond the immediate area. Systematic, organised national surveillance might look like over-reaction, until we find a queen or two happily setting up home in Temuka, or Levin, or wherever. We need to urge MPI to mount both a stronger tactical game around the current finds, and a coherent national surveillance programme.

NZBI and Apiculture NZ have been urging this from the outset. The lack of grip on this issue should concern us all.

MPI has – rightly – set up a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of scientists and relevant experts to help. It’s met, er, once. It meets again on Thursday 4 December. I’m told it will be asked to review MPI’s work and look ahead to the late-summer and autumn phases. Sensible. But meeting every now and then is just not enough. Scientific advice needs to be integrated into the daily management of any fast-moving response like this, with short feedback loops and a clear mandate to offer challenge and support right where it matters. Instead, the TAG is sporadic, and off to one side. This is a blunder.

Meanwhile the GIA “governance group” has been meeting without NZBI present (NZBI, and me personally, refused to sign the NDA which would have prevented me writing this article). ApiNZ has attended. We are told they will soon start looking at “contingency planning” for the rest of this year and for future years. At one level this is sensible; at another it risks the response slowing down and changing into a management plan. We know how successful that can be. Beekeepers need a real voice at this table.

MPI’s slow communications and rigid hierarchies have also been a drag on the wider response. Fast-moving biosecurity threats need fast-moving information sharing and flexible structures. Reassuring press releases don’t actually change the facts, and may lead to complacency. The hornets don’t read the news, they just get on with breeding.

New Zealand does not yet know how widespread Asian hornets are. We are operating with partial visibility (inevitable at this stage) and slow and disconnected processes. The number of queens found is rising. It sounds an exaggeration to see this as a potential national economic emergency, but we face a serious cumulative economic and environmental drag from hornets, wasps, varroa, AFB and other diseases. A profound, slow-growing change in the operating environment is just as serious for beekeepers.

Beekeepers need to stay engaged, stay informed, and keep pressing for stronger, smarter action.

This is not a short fight. But with unity across the industry, sober public messages, and pressure on MPI to lift its game, we can still get ahead of this threat. Maybe.

Ian Fletcher is a former head of New Zealand’s security agency, the GCSB, chief executive of the UK Patents Office, free trade negotiator with the European Commission and biosecurity expert for the Queensland government. These days he is a commercial flower grower in the Wairarapa and consultant to the apiculture industry with NZ Beekeeping Inc.