We Few, We Lucky Few: 20 Years on from Nelson’s Varroa Incursion

Nelson beekeeper Nigel Costley was in the thick of it when Varroa destructor was first identified in the South Island, June 2006. He describes an exhilarating six months on the front line – a time of steep learning, excitement, disappointment and controversy. But most of all, a camaraderie sometimes scarce in the beekeeping community.

By Nigel Costley

Nelson beekeeper Nigel Costley took the bee sample which included the first varroa mites detected in the South Island in 2006, and then had a front-row seat for the response which followed.

It would be a world first: a varroa outbreak totally eliminated. And, for a few brief heady months, we were believers.

Yes, in retrospect, it was naïve and self-serving, but at the time the South Island was thought to be varroa-free. The apiary surveillance had done what it was designed to do: pick up early signs of varroa. In this case in the Nelson suburb of Stoke, on 15 June 2006. We had three months to act until the riot of spring would sweep all before it.

An experienced hobbyist beekeeper, I was doing the apiary surveillance in Stoke that unwittingly picked up the first sample. I only knew about it a few days later when the lab results came through. To ensure there was no spread beyond the exclusion zone – a roughly 30 km area surrounding Nelson City – a delimiting survey was required for the top of the South Island. Hence a large number of AgriQuality (now AsureQuality) staff descended on Nelson and set up a temporary HQ. Working in teams of three – one AgriQuality guy and two local beekeepers – inspections would cover a huge area, reaching from Farewell Spit, through Murchison, to the Marlborough Sounds.

Keen to broaden my experience, I joined one of these teams, as luck would have it with Norbert Klose. He saw an ad in the paper looking for beekeepers and said: “wow, that looks like me!”

Using two Apistan per brood box, with a sticky board in for 24 hours, we spent the next four weeks up to our elbows surveying bees in every condition and apiary site imaginable. We were trained to be very pedantic about retrieving the Apistan strips. Whatever number went in, the same number came out.

Not used to handling bees in mid-winter, I was amazed at how many queen-right hives retained their drones. We often buddied up with other teams when handling big apiaries, and as a consequence got to work with Nelson’s most experienced and capable beekeepers. The sense of working to a common purpose in such company was intoxicating.

Bee Murderers – Licenced to Kill

I soon discovered that Klose was a much more adventurous beekeeper than me when he abseiled down a steep bank to reach a feral hive. He received a ‘talking to’ from Health and Safety. After the delimiting survey was complete, Klose and I were employed, via an 0800 number to our cell phone, to answer calls from the public about swarms and feral hives. On account of all the publicity the public were well up on the eradication drive.

We became licensed bee murderers – a horrible job initially but we hardened to it. For nests/swarms in enclosed spaces the technique used was not environmentally pure: reduce space with Gorilla Filler and poison the entrance with carbaryl (subsequently banned).

As spring began the calls came thick and fast in ever more unusual and obscure places. If it was an exposed swarm we tried to catch it in a large plastic bag, suffocate it, then send it to the lab. We weighed them too – the largest we ever got was 4.8kg.

After initial incursions in Nelson city, varroa was soon after found in Tapawera and Pelorus in 2006. For several months it was hoped that the spread could be limited there, but it was not to be.

An arborist in a former life, Klose took to catching swarms in high places with a gusto that gave me conniptions. His finest hour came when we tackled a nest below a high window sill at Warwick House (castle… see the pic). I thought ‘forget it’ but Klose was game. He shot up his trusty 12 metre extension ladder, hive tool at the ready. He couldn’t quite reach it. Then he asked the owner, Nick Ferrier, if he had a spare broom handle. He did. Klose then attached his hive tool to its end with masking tape. Thus armed, he charged back up the ladder, Errol Flynn fashion. He now could just reach the nest with his makeshift spear. My abiding memory is, I’m down below desperately clutching the almost vertical ladder, inundated with comb and enraged bees. So much for the Health and Safety ‘talking to’.

As time went on we began losing faith in eradication largely because of human factors. Klose gave me his take recently saying, “the average Kiwi doesn’t like to be told what to do”.

“People get suspicious and make up stories. It would be even worse today with social media.”

Local beekeeper Norbert Klose worked on the front lines of Nelson’s varroa response in 2006, taking an adventurous approach to collecting bee swarms for elimination. The experience was “life changing” for Klose, stimulating a strong connection to beekeeping which continues to this day.

We were also involved in setting up the bait station trialling aromatic honey additives to the sugar syrup to enhance their attractiveness. I was amazed at how variable sites were within the exclusion zone, an area still thick with feral bees. In two sites the bees barely touched the bait, while the third was sucked dry in a matter of hours. The effectiveness of bait stations obviously depends on available forage.

Even after the eradication was abandoned we continued to be employed for monitoring and sample collection until the end of the season.

AgriQuality-Guys

Marco Gonzalez arrived early in the campaign working as an AP1 for AgriQuality. A native of Paraguay, Gonzalez’s training as a veterinarian included beekeeping. He is currently Operations Manager Southern Region NZ Bee Health and Biosecurity, having worked for the AFB-focused agency since 2018.

Gonzalez was always sceptical towards hopes of eradication, largely because of the huge number of feral hives, unregistered apiaries, and unsupportive beekeepers.

“Those beekeepers bringing in hives for kiwifruit pollination were supposed to treat, but many of them didn’t,” he says looking back 20 years.

The Pelorus find – 30km by flight, much more by road and a week after my discovery in Stoke – was quite a surprise. That beekeeper didn’t have an apiary in Stoke, but had shared honey extraction with someone who did. They found heavy infestation within the zone in north/east Nelson.

Warwick House, Nelson, one of many sites requiring some adventurous swarm catching techniques during the varroa incursion response in the district, 2006.

There were hive movement restrictions outside the zone which were also often ignored. There were unconfirmed rumours that varroa turned up in Rangiora 400km away. (Without hive movement varroa is thought to spread naturally only 5km a year.)

Tony Roper, also working as an AP1, was one of the first on the scene and remembers inspecting heavily infested hives from day one.

“These hives had at least 20,000 mites, but looked healthy, no sign of viruses,” he says.

Apart from that, he thought the early signs of eradication looked pretty good. Roper’s diplomatic skills were brought to bear when liaising with renegade beekeepers as nine out of 79 registered beekeepers refused to comply with the scheme.

“Some of them threatened to shoot me, but on the whole they were compliant.”

Based on reports of a swarm at a garage near Port Nelson, Roper suspects that varroa had been in Nelson undetected for six months.

“That’s the thing about varroa, it’s always ahead of where you think it is,” says Roper, who to this day still works three days a week for AsureQuality.

The Davidson Effect

That there was an eradication attempt at all is due to one beekeeper: Mapua queen breeder Matt Davidson. He remembers the initial meeting with biosecurity officials where they said varroa was here to stay and we’d just have to lump it. Davidson stood up at the meeting and said he wasn’t happy with that, and challenged the assembled beekeepers to join him in fighting this decision.

Matt Davidson. The Mapua beekeeper was instrumental in rallying beekeepers in an attempt to eliminate varroa from the region in 2006.

“After the biosecurity guys had gone from the meeting the initial group was formed to give it a crack,” says Davidson.

The news of his stance quickly spread and a subsequent meeting drew around 50 beekeepers, picking up support not just from the affected hive owners, but Federated Farmers and local orchardists.

“I was fielding phone calls from all over the country,” Davidson says, adding that media started to attend their meetings.

The group became incorporated, the South Island Varroa Control Group, SIVCG, to handle the donations and pledges of support that poured in. Davidson was appointed chairman and spokesperson.

Based on the premise that varroa was confined to Nelson City, the SIVCG began to formulate a plan to compensate hive owners in the effected elimination area and set up poison bait stations to destroy the remaining feral hives. Meanwhile, an AgriQuality-led survey of all the registered hives in the top of the South Island carried out over July and early August found no further cases over the initial findings. 

It was at this point, after a meeting between SIVCG leadership and Minister of Agriculture and Biosecurity Jim Anderton, the Clark Government decided to support the eradication attempt. But it came with caveats.

“The Government did not want to use their executive powers to force beekeepers into handing over their hives and insisted the scheme was supported by 90% of the effected beekeepers,” Davidson says.

Then, working in collaboration with the Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), SIVCG managed the purchase and organised collection, and shipment north of all hives in the effected zone. Using mostly volunteer labour, over 800 hives were shifted. Support came from many corners. Russell and Annette Berry came from Rotorua to Nelson for long stints with Annette’s trusty sewing machine used to make netting to cover the hives in transit.

Norbert Klose removes a swarm during the varroa incursion response in Nelson 2006.

In September, when the eradication plan still looked feasible, it came as a nasty shock to learn that the poison’s manufacturer refused to allow the use of fipronil off label.

“Jim Anderton phoned me and said ‘what do we do?’ I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t sought permission already,” Davidson says.

With bait stations set up all over the area already, evidence emerged from laboratory tests on dead hives that fipronil was being used. SIVCG sought legal advice which strongly advised against this practice. One of the MAF officials took Davidson aside and asked him if he knew of anyone using it. His reply? “No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did”.

However, fipronil ceased being a burning issue as unofficial reports started coming in of varroa being found outside the zone. The sceptics were right. Davidson thinks there were multiple factors working against them, including a large number of unregistered hives, and uncooperative hobbyists. But there were small victories.

“Even beekeepers who thought we were wasting our time came on board when they saw how it was uniting the beekeepers,” he says.

Life Changing Experiences

So, while the war against the invading varroa in the South Island may have ultimately been lost, we got six months advance education in the biology, politics, social dynamics, and endless vagaries of beekeeping that no PhD course could possibly conceive.

A 4.8kg swarm, circa 2006, the biggest that “licensed bee murderers” Nigel Costley and Norbert Klose recovered during their attempts to eliminate varroa.

I always knew I wasn’t cut out to be a commercial beekeeper, but figured I now knew enough to be informative, and went on to ten years of running beekeeper training courses at Wakefield and Pelorus.

It had even more impact for Klose – “It changed my life”. His inspection work expanded into permanent AFB and exotic monitoring, also with a three-year pathogen programme. From having a couple of hives in the backyard, he set up commercial apiary dedicated to finding organic means of varroa control. He imported Liebig formic acid dispensers from Germany and is practising diverse and experimental forms of organic control to this day. He runs a honey and bee produce stall at Nelson’s famed Saturday market and is currently tutoring Nelson’s AFB recognition course.

So, ill-fated though it was, the eradication attempt was for us a ‘once in a life time experience’, giving us the impetus to advance our beekeeping in ways we never could have imagined.

“It’s amazing how many of those beekeepers we worked with then are still good friends,” Klose says.

“You realise it takes a whole beekeeping community to make this thing work.”