Feral Beekeepers
Nestled into the foot of the mountains lies a gum tree forest. A concrete path meanders down along overgrown red and purple bouquets. Mike Allerton pops his curious maroon head of hair out of his workshop and greets me with an eager “Hello”. He leads me to a wooden verandah adjacent to 8 out of 12 of his bee hives. Bees and other insects fly between our conversation. To the flowers, they are nonchalant and professional like waiters attending tables. Mike speaks wisely with the voice of an Australian who has seen their share of sun and keeps their boots firmly on the ground. “When I was a kid in the ‘60s and ‘70s the front yard was full of flowers for mum. The backyard was full of vegetables and bees - for dad. He couldn’t understand why you'd waste space on flowers. So I helped him out with the bees. He was a bit of a tightwad and there was only one veil, so he got to wear that.
“So you got stung?”
“Oh hundreds of times”
As a youth, Mike began to get progressively worse reactions to bee stings and had to stop beekeeping for his own good. Perhaps reminding him of the simpler days of childhood - Mike just couldn't stop thinking about the little critters. In 2015 Mike was kayaking when, like a prophetic miracle, he was stung in the middle of a lake by a bee. “That’s an unusual place to get stung by a bee,” I interject.
Mike shrugs, “Bees do what bees do.”
After having only a mild reaction Mike decided to revisit his childhood hobby. Beekeeping has taken Mike on a journey, from classes with Doug Purdie, an Australian beekeeping legend, to pulling out a 3-meter bee colony in an air force maintenance hangar. Mike recounts, “They had bees in the wall, and there were bricks on both sides… it was on the second floor, so I had to get in a boom and climb up. And I, because I'm a tradesman… I've got the skills to be able to remove bricks without breaking them. And so I had to pull out 106 bricks.”
It seems like it’s hard to tell Mike to be careful.
In recent years Mike has decided to devote the majority of his time to teaching, studying and keeping bees. Bees are in trouble. No one knows this more than Mike. Climate change, habitat loss and pests are wreaking havoc on bee populations. Yet, this past year has proven that the biggest problem bees are encountering may in fact be from those that choose to have them.
Beekeeping is a hobby that is exploding in popularity. However, many expecting to plop a beehive in their garden and reap the benefits soon after, are left baffled by the amount of work that goes into keeping bees. Mike says, “you've got all of these people that become bee havers - they have bees, but they don't keep bees.” Some beekeepers don’t register their hives - a requirement with all livestock. This mainly boils down to the fear of government pest and disease inspections which would be followed by mandatory destruction of the bees if positive. Some are also simply misinformed. The government labels unregistered bee populations as feral bees. Mike and his mates have coined their own term - feral beekeepers.
“They're not keeping feral bees. They are the feral ones. They don't care about the biosecurity requirements,” explains Mike.
Feral beekeepers are distinctly different from Mike and his mates. They leave their hives alone, vulnerable to pests and diseases. Mike does regular inspections and alcohol tests. They leave their hives to rot in the elements, protected by cheap oils and decorative paints, only to collapse at a touch. Mike boils his wooden hive frames in molten wax giving them a thick resilient shield. He reckons it's “like frying chips.” Feral beekeepers have always been a problem within the beekeeping industry. Now however, the stakes are much higher and the agriculture industry is on the line.
After crunching the numbers you begin to realize the importance of the honey bee to the Australian agriculture industry - in total the beekeeping industry is worth just over $14 billion. Honey bees thrive in Australia's floral-rich habitat, leading beekeepers to produce on average between 20 to 30 thousand tonnes of honey a year. Australia’s bee product exports are considered world-class, but perhaps one of the most important benefits within the beekeeping sector is pollination. About 35% of plants rely on bees for pollination and up to 75% of plants benefit from the honey bee through indirect pollination, improving yield and plant quality. If the honey bee ceased to exist on the Australian continent it would mean ⅓ of Australia’s crop would be impacted - let alone the seismic shock it would send through the ecosystem.
The varroa mite - or more aptly named, Varroa destructor - is a bee parasite native to the Asian continent. What's little more than an annoying pest to Asian honey bees, Apis cerana, which has evolved for millions of years to live alongside varroa -for Apis Millifera, the European honey bee, it is decimating.
Varroa works by infiltrating a bee colony and implanting itself in the uncapped brood cell which contains an egg or larva. Once the cap is sealed by a nurse bee, varroa can lay up to 6 eggs which feed on the developing bee pupae, transmitting up to 20 different known viruses, including the deformed wing virus which often kills the bee in 48 hours. Within the colony, numbers can explode in a matter of months, weeks or even days, exponentially weakening the colony like a tumour slowly poisoning a body. To make matters worse, due to the social tendencies of bees, workers of an infected hive will bring varroa to other hives in the area.
“Every country it gets to...BOOM it explodes,” Mike says, making an explosion gesture.
“Bloody hell!”
“Indeed”
It’s a parasite that could potentially destroy the Australian bee industry if it gets out of hand. One which entered the port of Newcastle on the 22nd of June 2022 sending shockwaves through the world of both bees and their keepers.
To help protect Australia’s beekeeping industry, Mike volunteered for the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI), on the varroa mite emergency operation. The DPI has set up a 10km eradication zone from the first detected cases of varroa in Newcastle, double the distance of a bee’s journey before returning to the hive. 25 km surveillance zones are also in place.
Mike explains how they destroy the infested hives in this area, “you wait for all of the forager bees to come back, at night time, then you block the entrance so they can't get out, lift the lid, pour half a litre of petrol over it.” This is the most humane way to destroy a hive. Mike continues, “I killed several hundred hives this way over six days. You do it and you've got the bees, humming, humming, humming. You do it and seconds later it's dead silent.” While Mike talks I hear the meditative buzz of the bee hives next to us. I wonder if Mike would do this to his own hives if it came to it. Without asking I already know the answer. He wouldn't think twice.
The DPI says the operation is working. We are however witnessing random outbreaks hundreds of kilometres away from infected zones. Like drug lords smuggling illegal narcotics, feral beekeepers are moving their bees out of eradication zones. Once they have moved them it isn’t long before their unregistered hive spreads varroa and starts a new outbreak. “That individual has caused the eradication of bees in an area when they were so far from the danger zone. They’re not helping things,” says Mike, visibly annoyed. As a consequence, the boundary today for the eradication zone has blown up from the first days of the outbreak. I asked Mike if he thought there was anything the government could have done better in response to Varroa. “Instead of 10 km, make it 25 and just hammer it with everything, don't hesitate. It gave a bit too much notice for the feral beekeepers.”
In order to stop misinformation and feral beekeeping, Mike has begun teaching kids at his local primary school and doing talks at bee clubs and conventions around NSW. He tells me how at first he struggled with public speaking. This was late information that baffled me slightly when Mike described himself as “naturally introverted.” He has a natural fatherly charisma, determined to pass down knowledge to kids like me. Mike recounts “I was into adventure sports. I did paragliding, skydiving, rock climbing, and whitewater kayaking.
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. I found none of these things frightening but, dig deep into the emotions, that was frightening. Until I had these experiences that unlocked it. Getting up in front of people? Oh Terrifying. Going to a party full of strangers? Terrifying. ”
Now, Mike travels from club meetings to schools to conventions delivering talks. Perhaps to see a brighter future for beekeeping or perhaps it's just his obsession.
