Beekeepers’ Hornet Bounty Idea Lands in MPI’s Too Hard Basket

With yellow-legged hornet nests continuing to be found on Auckland’s North Shore, more than six months on from the first Vespa velutina finds in the city, some beekeepers are calling for a ‘bounty’ programme of financial incentives to be implemented to help encourage more finds. However, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) say the increased workload on them to police the process is too much.

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Don Tweeddale believes finding the money will be easy – “all we need is the people who are out there to destroy it to be happy to be notified,” says the owner of Tweeddale’s Honey, one of New Zealand’s largest beekeeping businesses.

Those people would be the staff at MPI’s Biosecurity New Zealand agency, who have already responded to approximately 10,500 notifications since October and destroyed 48 queen hornets in that time, 35 with nests (as of February 1).

“We actually get a lot more traction with people and better outcomes when public reporting is kept safe, accurate, and done in the genuine best interest of protecting New Zealand – not for financial reward,” says Mike Inglis, Biosecurity NZ commissioner north.

“Offering a financial reward could encourage poor behaviours and cost us more resource and time. For example, paying could encourage incorrect or misleading reports like old photos/harmless bugs/deliberate false finds, overwhelming response teams and slowing down genuine investigations.”

Tweeddale isn’t buying the reasoning though, or that altruism from the wider public is worth relying on.

“If they want to go down that line, I am pretty sure this hornet will take off,” the Taihape beekeeper says.

He stresses the need to eliminate as many nests as possible, before the colonies breed queens to hibernate the winter and which are much harder to locate.

“This could be funded not by them, but by New Zealand’s commercial beekeepers and other interested parties. This is an independent reward system. Biosecurity NZ will deal with destruction, and we will put up the reward. I can’t see anything wrong with that,” Tweeddale says.

“If you can get a whole heap of eyes and ears who are incentivised to find it, it is a whole heap better than a handful of employees trying to find the thing.”

A yellow-legged hornet nest, in Portugal. MPI should be assisting with implementation of a bounty system to encourage nest finds in New Zealand say beekeepers. 

He has an ally in another of the country’s largest and longest serving beekeepers, Arataki Honey owner Russell Berry. The pair have discussed the bounty idea, and New Zealand Beekeeping Inc (NZBI), of which Berry is an executive member, have pushed the concept in recent incursion response meetings with MPI. The idea has been handed straight back to them though.

“New Zealand Beekeeping Incorporated has raised the potential of a reward programme, and we have suggested the industry body work up what that may look like as part of wider surveillance by beekeepers through their own organisations,” Inglis says.

NZBI advisor Ian Fletcher has been in those meetings suggesting the bounty system and believes MPI’s response shows a lack of belief in the competency of their systems.

“We think this response misses the positive effect of sustained and sustaining community engagement, and undersells our ability to build a system that filters reports that are not genuinely likely to require further investigation.  We certainly think it’s an idea worth a more serious examination,” Fletcher says.

NZBI have promoted to MPI the need for hornet surveillance outside of the 11km zone extending from where current finds have been made. In that area extensive trapping has taken place and in January male hornets have been caught and fitted with 160mg radio tracking devices to help locate nests.

Nine nests were found on the North Shore in January, with at least three of the finds aided by the radio tracking.

Are there yellow-legged hornets further afield in New Zealand? Biosecurity NZ believes “it is unlikely” and say “they are closely monitoring the situation”, but have not explained how.

NZBI say they have made clear to MPI their concern at the lack of organised delimiting surveys outside of Auckland, with the risk being that a queen hornet(s) has ‘hitchhiked’ its way to a location further afield. A bounty system could significantly reduce the chances of the hornet establishing elsewhere they believe, but it seems to have been flicked to the ‘too hard’ basket by the response’s leaders.

“If we don’t run a reward system, if we rely on the government to find it, with the help of voluntary information – how many people are voluntarily going to look out into their backyard and look for a hornets’ nest? Virtually nobody,” Tweeddale says.

“But if there was a good incentive, we might have a chance of getting rid of the queens this autumn.”