Honey
August 31, 2026
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A few years ago, most people in Western Australia had never heard the words “varroa mite”. Beekeepers had, and they spoke about it the way you might talk about a bushfire two states over, something serious but a long way from your back fence. Then in June 2022 the mite turned up in a couple of test hives at the Port of Newcastle, and the conversation changed almost overnight.
If you keep a hive in the backyard, buy local honey, or just like knowing where your food comes from, varroa is worth understanding. It’s the single biggest threat honey bees face anywhere in the world, and Australia was the last major honey-producing country to stay free of it. That’s a big part of why our honey tastes the way it does and why it’s as clean as it is. The mite has a knack for staying out of sight until it’s done real damage, so knowing what it looks like and how it spreads matters more than most people realise.
What is a varroa mite, exactly?
Varroa destructor is a tiny external parasite, reddish-brown, about the size of a pinhead, and it lives on honey bees. You can sometimes spot one with the naked eye, sitting on a bee’s back like a little tick. That comparison is closer than it sounds, because varroa feeds on bees in much the same way a tick feeds on a dog.
For a long time everyone assumed the mites simply sucked the bees’ blood. More recent research has shown they actually feed on the fat body, an organ that works a bit like a bee’s liver, storing energy and helping it fight off disease. A bee carrying mites is weaker, lighter, and far more vulnerable, the way you’d feel run down if something was quietly draining you day after day.
The mites breed inside the sealed brood cells where baby bees develop, which is the clever and nasty part of their life cycle. A female mite slips into a cell just before the workers cap it over, lays her eggs alongside the developing bee, and her young feed and mature in there hidden from view. By the time a new bee chews its way out, several new mites come with it, ready to find the next cell. Left alone, the numbers don’t creep up, they snowball.
How varroa actually harms a hive
On its own, the feeding would be bad enough. The bigger problem is what the mites carry. As they move from bee to bee they spread viruses, and the worst of them is deformed wing virus. You’ll see it in exactly the way the name suggests: young bees emerging with shrivelled, useless wings, unable to fly or forage, dying within days.
A strong colony can shrug off a small mite load for a season or two. But once the mites and the viruses build past a tipping point, things unravel quickly. The workforce shrinks, the brood gets patchy, the bees that are left can’t gather enough to see the hive through, and eventually the whole colony collapses. Overseas, beekeepers who don’t treat their hives often lose them within a year or two of varroa arriving. It really is that decisive.
This is why varroa reshapes beekeeping wherever it lands. In countries that have lived with it for decades, you simply can’t keep bees the way our grandparents did, popping a lid on a box in the garden and leaving them to it. Hives need regular monitoring, mite counts, and chemical treatments a few times a year just to stay alive. Beekeeping goes from something you tend to something you manage.
The history of varroa mite in Australia
For decades Australia was the lucky exception. Varroa had spread through Asia, Europe, the Americas and New Zealand, and yet our bees stayed clear of it, protected by distance, strict quarantine, and a fair bit of good fortune. That run came to an end on 22 June 2022, when routine surveillance found varroa in two of six sentinel hives at the Port of Newcastle in New South Wales.
What followed was the largest biosecurity response of its kind the country had seen. New South Wales set up red and purple zones, locked down hive movements, and made the heartbreaking call to euthanise infested and at-risk colonies in an effort to stamp the mite out before it could spread. Beekeepers lost hives they’d built over years. For a while it genuinely looked like it might work, which would have made Australia the only country ever to successfully eradicate varroa.
It wasn’t to be. After fourteen months and tens of thousands of hives destroyed, the mite kept turning up in new places, and in September 2023 the national decision was made that eradication was no longer achievable. The program shifted from trying to wipe varroa out to helping beekeepers live with it, what the authorities call the transition to management. The two-year management program formally wrapped up in early 2026, though the guidance and resources it produced are still freely available.
Since then the mite has kept moving. It’s now been confirmed across several eastern states and territories, including New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT. More worryingly for the beekeepers already dealing with it, 2026 brought the first Australian cases of varroa developing resistance to the chemicals used to treat it, first to the pyrethroid strips, then to amitraz, two of the main tools in the kit. That’s a problem beekeepers overseas know well, and it makes the job of keeping hives alive harder again.
Where varroa mite is in Australia right now (map)
If you’re trying to picture the spread, it helps to see it laid out. Here’s where varroa mite has and hasn’t been detected across the country as things stand in 2026.
Varroa mite in Australia map: the eastern states and South Australia have recorded detections, while Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania remain varroa-free as of June 2026.
The pattern tells the story. Varroa landed on the east coast and has worked its way through the eastern states and into South Australia, mostly following the movement of managed hives for crop pollination. The three places still clear, WA, the Territory and Tasmania, are the ones that are hardest to reach by road with a truckload of bees.
The good news: varroa mite still isn't in WA
Here’s the part worth holding onto. As things stand, Western Australia is still varroa-free. While the mite has worked its way across the eastern states, it hasn’t made the jump west, and that isn’t an accident.
WA has two big things going for it. The first is geography. The Nullarbor is a vast stretch of nothing for a bee or a hive to cross, and that natural moat has protected us from plenty of pests over the years. The second is the work going on quietly in the background, surveillance hives, checkpoints along the major routes including the Nullarbor crossing, and tight rules on what can be brought into the state. The biggest risk has always been people, hives or equipment carried west by someone who doesn’t realise what they might be bringing with them, which is exactly what the checks are there to catch.
So for now, WA bees are doing something that’s become genuinely rare around the world. They’re working the way bees are meant to, without mites on their backs and without the chemical treatments needed to keep those mites in check. If you’d like the full picture of where things sit, the National Varroa Mite Management Program keeps an up-to-date national map and is the most reliable place to follow it.
What it could mean for backyard beekeepers
If you keep a hive or two at home, none of this is meant to frighten you, but it is worth being ready. WA’s backyard beekeeping scene is one of the most relaxed in the world precisely because we’ve never had to factor varroa in. A healthy hive in the garden has mostly looked after itself, with a check now and then and a harvest at the end of the season.
If the mite ever does arrive, that easy rhythm changes. You’d need to learn to monitor for mites, doing things like a sugar shake or an alcohol wash to count what’s in the hive, and you’d likely need to treat a few times a year to keep the colony alive. It’s not impossible, beekeepers across the eastern states are learning it right now, but it’s a real shift in time, cost and know-how. Hobby hives that get left alone are usually the first to collapse, because nobody’s watching the mite numbers.
The most useful thing any WA beekeeper can do today is keep an eye on the hive and report anything odd. If you ever see bees with shrunken or deformed wings, an unusually fast decline, or a sudden crash in numbers, that’s worth acting on straight away. In WA, varroa is a prohibited organism, which means anyone who finds or even suspects it is legally required to report it. The quickest way is the Exotic Plant Pest Hotline on 1800 084 881, which connects you straight to DPIRD, the state department that handles it. Early reporting is how a state buys itself time. New beekeepers can find their feet with our beginner’s guide to backyard beekeeping in WA, and it’s a good habit to learn what a healthy frame looks like so you’d notice quickly if something were wrong.
Why our honey is some of the cleanest in the world
This is where varroa and your honey jar meet, and it’s the part we’re proudest of. In most of the world, keeping bees alive means treating them, and treating them means putting miticides and other chemicals into the hive several times a year. Beekeepers do their best to time it so residues don’t end up in the honey, but the treatments are part of the system. Take varroa out of the picture and you take all of that out with it.
This is now the line that divides east from west. Beekeepers in the eastern states are having to dose their hives with miticides several times a year just to keep them alive, the same routine the rest of the world has lived with for decades. Here in WA, because we’re still varroa-free, our bees have never needed any of it. There are no miticide strips in the brood box and no chemical schedule to work around. On top of that, Australian beekeepers don’t routinely dose hives with antibiotics the way some overseas operations do, partly because our bees have been spared a lot of the diseases that make those treatments common elsewhere. What you’re left with is about as close to honey straight from the flower as you can get.
That’s not marketing spin, it’s a real consequence of where we are and how we keep our bees. No antibiotics, no miticides, no chemical residues, just honey made by healthy bees foraging WA’s wildflowers and bushland. We don’t heat or micro-filter it either, which you can read about in our honey extraction process. In a world where clean honey has become the exception rather than the rule, our range of Western Australian honey is some of the purest you’ll find anywhere. When you spoon it onto your toast, the only thing in there is what the bees put there.
Frequently asked questions about varroa mite
Are varroa mites in Australia?
Yes. Varroa mite was first found at the Port of Newcastle in June 2022, and after the eradication effort was called off in September 2023 it spread through several eastern states and into South Australia. Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania are still varroa-free as of 2026.
Is varroa mite harmful to humans?
No. Varroa only feeds on honey bees, it can’t live on people or pets, so it’s no threat to you at all. It doesn’t affect the honey either, the mite never ends up in the jar, which is part of why our WA honey stays as clean as it does.
Can honey bees survive varroa mites?
A colony can cope with a small number of mites, but left untreated the numbers build quickly and the hive usually collapses within a season or two. In varroa areas, beekeepers keep their bees alive by monitoring mite levels and treating several times a year. Our WA bees don’t need any of that yet.
How do you get rid of varroa mites?
Once varroa is established, you don’t really get rid of it, you manage it. Beekeepers in affected states use miticide treatments alongside monitoring and good hive practice to keep numbers low. Because WA is still free of the mite, local beekeepers don’t have to treat at all.
What naturally kills varroa mites?
In the eastern states and overseas, beekeepers lean on organic options like oxalic acid, formic acid and thymol, plus techniques like drone brood removal, to knock mite numbers down without synthetic chemicals. None of it is needed in WA while we stay varroa-free, which is exactly why our honey carries no treatment residue.
So, what does this mean for WA honey?
Varroa mite has changed beekeeping right across eastern Australia in just a few short years, and the spread of resistance shows it isn’t going to get easier over there. Western Australia has held the line so far, thanks to a big empty desert and a lot of careful work, and every season we stay varroa-free is a season our bees stay healthy and our honey stays clean.
We’ll keep doing our part, watching our hives, backing the surveillance effort, and looking after the bees that make all of this possible. You can do yours simply by choosing local. Every jar of WA honey supports the beekeepers helping to keep this state one of the last truly clean places to keep bees. If you’d like to taste the difference for yourself, have a look through our Western Australian honey shop.
Piesseful Bees Honey
Piesseful Bees Honey, Australia's favourite honey shop. 100% raw honey from Western Australia, including Jarrah honey and bush honey.
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