Australian wild bees and professional beekeepers are facing a crisis that the country has never seen before, which is also creating an almost certain food security threat for Australia.

The epicentre for the crisis seems to be south-east Queensland. The ABC reported (4/6/26):

In March 2025, Varroa destructor first appeared in Queensland beehives.

It is believed the parasitic mite, deadly to European honey bees, was carried over the Scenic Rim from New South Wales, which has been battling varroa since 2022.

Just a year on, it is estimated 90 per cent of south-east Queensland’s wild honey bee colonies have collapsed, and almost all managed colonies are in a battle for survival.

“For south-east Queensland, the only word I can use now is devastation,” Rick McFarlane, a commercial apiarist known as The Backyard Beekeeper, said.

and:

Western European honey bees have been in Australia for 200 years and are responsible for most of the pollination necessary to grow food crops.

Macadamias, mangoes and avocadoes are some of the Queensland products most reliant on them.

If managed colonies collapse, and there are almost no wild bees left, harvest failures are a real possibility.

“We think there will be the potential for pollination shortfalls,” Rob Stephens from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries said.

“There will be industries that don’t quite understand their reliance on bees for pollination services because they’ve been over-reliant on wild honey bees.”

He said some would need to pay for commercial beekeepers to come in for the first time.

“There is that possibility that there’s a direct threat to food security,” Mr Stephens said.

“If you add (pollination) as another fixed price, that could push some growers over the limit.” (Click here to read more)

I recorded the below interview with beekeeper Simon Mulvany from Save The Bees Australia on Thursday (18/6/26) and discussed the current situation with the bee crisis.

Simon Mulvany said one example of the crisis is that Australian almond farmers will be 300,000 hives short for what is needed to pollinate their almonds.

My Mulvany said the reason for the 300,000-hive shortfall is that many commercial beekeepers have had most of their bees killed by the Varroa mites.

Australian bees, both wild bees and commercial bees, have also been under threat from poisoning for a long time.

One example is 250,000 bees were killed in Corowa NSW in March 2025, after being poisoned by the pesticide fipronil, a chemical used to control ants, cockroaches, fleas and other insects. (Click here to read more)

Simon Mulvany also spoke about fire ant poisoning killing bees. In March 2024 The Guardian reported “Fipronil” was being used to kill fire ants and the Varroa mite in Australia but is banned in Europe and is harmful to humans. (Click here to read more)

It makes you wonder if fire ant poisoning in south-east Queensland is also a major cause of the “90% of wild honey bee colonies” being killed.

Below is a video of another beekeeper and his story dealing with the Varroa mite. Yahoo News reported (11/6/26):

A Queensland farmer has photographed the “sobering day” he began torching the broken remnants of beehives that were once worth $100,000.

Murray Arkadieff’s business, Farmgate Honey, has been ravaged by the arrival of an invasive parasite, the varroa mite.

“Some of our hives were 20 or 30 years old, which my dad would have made,” he told Yahoo News.

“My grandfather would have made some in the 1950s, a lot of them are very old.” (Click here to read more)

Below is a short video of Murray Arkadieff discussing how only 20 hives out of 200 survived in one area:

This article is a follow-up to my July 2022 article “Australia’s food security is under attack from varroa mites that kill bees. Was it an accident or was it from illegal importation of bees?” which starts off:

Australia’s food security is under threat with an almost unstoppable outbreak of varroa mites in Newcastle (NSW) and the surrounding regions, which could cost Australia $billions.

Most Australians at this point would not realise what damage the varroa mite can do. But in 2000 in New Zealand, a Varroa mite outbreak led to 90% of bees being killed which almost destroyed the industry. And if that were to happen in Australia, it would cause $billion in damage to Australia’s agriculture industry, which relies on bees for pollination. (Click here to read the article)

The federal and state governments have had since 2022 to fix the issue, knowing what would happen if they didn’t fix it. Either the governments were not able to fix the problem or it is gross incompetence.

I don’t have the solution, but the government doesn’t even seem to have a plan, which is disturbing.

I’ll keep following up on the issue, as Queensland looks like it will have a food security issue very soon regarding all food that needs pollination.

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