NSW Annual Conference 2025
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ANNUAL
I The beekeepers of NSW (and a few of us from elsewhere who just can’t helo ourselves) recently converged on the coastal town of Ballina, NSW, for the annual NSW conference. This was my first attendance at a NSWAA state conference (though far from my first state conference). 236 attendees came each day and there were 21 exhibitors.
® The conference was held yp . fi, atthe Ballina RSL club on the Richmond River. Photo by K Fricke From the moment I got in the registration line, it was clear they’re on a different page concerning varroa than us down here in Vic — “how’s your varroa levels?” “18 in my highest hives” “oh that’s a bit much this time of year,” all around me they were casually discussing their latest varroa counts and treatment plans!
Another frequent subject of immediate conversation was getting bogged trying to access bee sites and the marvel that it actually wasn’t raining, apparently it has recently been wet in NSW.
The presentations as one might expect strongly featured varroa mite treatments, but also touched on other issues, and then as an added scare Tropilaelaps mites showed up in two presentations.
On the varroa front, Miguel Rodriguez, managing director of Veto- Pharma (France based manufacturer of Bayvarol and Apivar) presented about their company. Jon Lockwood apparently recently visited their facility in France. Jon Lockwood also presented about what his company (Goldfields Honey) is doing for mite management. Most controversially he floated the idea that using Apivar with honey supers may not be a problem, citing a study’ which says amitraz degrades very quicky within colonies, 10 days in honey and 71 day in beeswax, and that even at 10 times the normal dosage, amitraz residues were not found in the honey or wax when analyzed 28 days after the end of treatment.
® Lunch of champions Photo by K Fricke
Dr Anne Marie Fauvel, formerly the Tech Team Coordinator for the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) in the USA expressed caution about this assessement however, pointing out that what amitraz does is break down into two main components called DMPF and DMA (I rather propose they should be called amia and trazia but hey) which are not necessarily perfectly safe, and amitraz products are not used with honey supers in the States. This is a very interesting issue and I’d like to do an in-depth analysis of this paper and what is known about DMPF and DMA, but AgVic won't let me write directly about varroa related topics so look for it after December.
Anyway, Dr Fauvel’s presentation was very interesting. Nearly no one is probably better able to speak to what is done as a whole by commercial beekeepers in the States than she, as the BIP teams she coordinated for years met with commercial beekeepers to help them monitor and deal with their varroa issues. I’d say they were like long-term VDOs but they seemed to do a lot more freeze-kill assays then VDOs are doing. Beekeepers who engaged with the BIP teams apparently consistently had 13% less losses. She talked about trends over time in miticide use in the States as popular miticides became ineffective due to resistance (the pyrethroids such as Bayvarol), or were found to be overly toxic (coumaphos). Another interesting highlight she mentioned was that commercial beekeepers in the states really don’t find oxalic fogging a practical method of treatment.
It seems to have gained a great enthusiasm here, which I feel like can perhaps being attributed to it having an outsized representation on that popular learning source known as Youtube, being as it makes for more interesting videos than simply putting boring old strips into hives. On the second day Dr Fauvel spoke again, this time about putting hives in refrigerated warehouses. In addition to her informative overview she linked us to a good video about it and a thorough pdf guide.? She emphasized not underestimating the power requirements for sucha facility. Lunch the first day consisted of a variety of greasy little beige things in puff pastry, from small mass produced meat pies and sausage rolls to two kinds of quiche. The award for best conference food 2025 is still wide open (| think WA won last year).
© No visit to Ballina is complete without visiting the Big Prawn. I also found they have a very nice maritime museum there.
Photo by K Fricke
Dr Emily Remnant presented about the latest research into new more targeted miticides, including double stranded RNA (see news item in this issue), and very targeted chemicals designed to bind very specifically to mite hormone receptors. These are promising developments as no one wants to continue putting toxic chemicals in hives for the rest of eternity.
Apresenter at some point, trying to assuage a perceived fear of technology amongst beekeepers while promoting a phone app, urged the audience “look, you're already using technology! How to you pay for fuel?” and without waiting for an answer provided one himself, “with your phone!” I thought was emblematic of the deep disconnect between people who love technology and those of us who area little more traditional. I think I'm probably on the upper half of beekeeper tech sawviness andI still think the fact that I can just tap my card against a machine to pay for my fuel is a technological marvel, and the idea of letting my phone pay for things willy nilly gives me a deep sense of unease, so it’s probably not the best note reach out to non-tech-savvy-beekeepers on. I Know beekeepers that don’t even have cell phones, so don’t you tech savvy people go thinking we're all on the same page (of our paper notebooks). Anyway, I digress. Ballina local Frewoini Baume presented about Tropilaelaps, a mite that is potentially worse than varroa (!) and currently on the spread throughout the world. She has lately been traveling the world studying it with leading researchers and gaining very valuable and enviable experience. On the second day Dr Cooper Schouten also presented on Tropilaelaos, and there is certainly enough to say about it that both presentations were very interesting and informative.
Dr Sasha Mikheyev was able to present the results of our first Colony Loss Survey (COLOSS), the most concisely interesting take away I found to be that beekeepers with varroa spent $27 and 32 minutes per hive last year managing it the mite.
That of course is only a fraction of the presentations but I were to recount everything this would be ten pages long. Suffice to say it was an interesting and enjoyable conference. As usual it ended with a nice dinner, and the usual auction was spiced up a bit by the presence of a talented professional auctioneer ginnying up the bids with professional skill and aplomb much to everyone’s enjoyment.
Endnotes “The Pettis Study,” though Jeff Pettis being the third listed author, following standard convention I'll call it “Chaimanee 2022” for short and fully: Chaimanee, V., Johnson, Pettis, (2022) “Determination of amitraz andits metabolites residue in honey and beeswax after Apivar® treatment in honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies,” Journal of Apicultural Research, DOL 10.1080/00218839.2021.1918943
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