Varroa mites have infected honey bee hives across NSW. The fight is on to contain their spread to other states

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The eradication of millions of honey bees in response to the spread of varroa mite, has cause big pollination concerns, especially for berry growers in northern New South Wales. But cold flower flies fill the gap?

Transcript

00:00Here's a bunch of insects pollinating blackberry bushes.

00:15They look like bees, but they're not bees.

00:21They're flies, and as pollinators, they work.

00:31In late June 2022, the deadly bee parasite Varroa mite was discovered for the first time

00:37in Australia.

00:38A month later, it was detected in the Nunner Glen region, which is 25km from Coffs Harbour.

00:45It's a renowned berry growing area.

00:47Farmers need to make sure they have pollinators.

00:53Brad Hocking is the lead horticulturalist at the Costa Berry Farm.

00:59Since Varroa mite, we're certainly working a bit closer with our beekeepers to make sure

01:05that they're supported in managing their bees and able to get good access and movement of

01:10their hives around the area.

01:12It's yet to have a major impact, but we do expect that it will present greater challenges

01:17for them in the management of their hive health.

01:20It's one of a few sites in the Coffs Harbour area which is taking part in a pollination

01:24trial using flies.

01:27Initially, we started looking at that in rubeus crops, and we're certainly happy to be progressing

01:33that now and looking at some really interesting alternative and future pollinators for our

01:40crops.

01:42Professor Amina Rader has been studying pollinators for 11 years.

01:46She's heading up research on managed fly pollinators.

01:50Funded by Hort Innovation, it's been running over the last four years.

01:54At this point, the first stage of the project is just to understand how efficient the flies

01:58are.

01:59And the way that we do that is by tagging flowers and putting bags on them while they're

02:02still in bud so that there's no pollen on them.

02:05And then we open the flowers, wait for the flies to visit once, twice, three times, five

02:09times, re-bag the flowers, and then wait for the fruit to develop, and then weigh the

02:13fruit and compare that against the open pollinator, which is what the honeybee is pollinating.

02:18Rayleigh just came out of the tunnel and handed me a blueberry.

02:23So the question is, how do I feel about eating a fly-pollinated blueberry?

02:29Pretty good, as it turns out.

02:30It's delicious.

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