I recently read in an article somewhere that sterilising equipment can help with the management of varroa mite in a hive.
Can anyone with experience speak a bit more about this? I’m not sure how one would go about sterilising a hive from varroa mites.
When I was working with the DPI on the Varrora control we used a metho spray. It sure kills them and any bee it contacts so it should be OK for your needs.
Cheers
Rob.
Like most things, it depends.
Varroa destructor can only survive without bees for five days, so stored equipment doesn’t need anything other than normal maintenance. Anything in recent contact with mite infested bees is a potential carrier of mites hitching a ride to the next hive, so decontamination practices can minimise you causing spread. By far the greatest spread is from hitch hikers on forager bees. At this stage, not an issue in Australia outside the red zone.
Confirming Rob’s comment, when I was volunteering in the DPI Red Zone eradication, we used metho spray to decontaminate everything. It’s very effective and fast at killing bees and mites.
I am extremely dubious of that. I was beekeeping in the UK 30 years ago when we had the same hopes. It was a losing battle. Now it is just a fact of life like SHB and Asian hornets in some parts of the world. You can’t eradicate them, just try to control them with good hive management practices. Hopefully Australia will realize this soon before too many more colonies are destroyed in a losing battle.
Just my opinion, but based on experience… 
Hi Dawn, I tend to agree with you, especially after reading that the UK had the same hopes. Even more so after taking a short drive in the bush containing large trees. I think the biggest challenge would be to eradicate all the wild hives adjacent to the red zones.
Someone recently sent Wilma a photo of a huge swarm that was situated in a supposed red zone.
All hope for eradication was gone a long time ago. Here in New South Wales we have new outbreaks popping up all over the state on a daily basis. Together with the fact that we are going into spring and main swarming season and also the fact that most ‘red zones’ are in close proximity to very large and mostly inaccessible National Parks with a very high density of feral European Honey bee hives there is no chance of eradicating at all, but they authority are still clinging to the concept. Maybe they are afraid of an avalanche of law suits and class actions coming in, the first one has already started. Whilst the plan of eradication was a very noble idea in the beginning the whole process was misguided, wrong and poorly executed and corrupted from the start, looking after big business interests only (example huge foreign owned almond plantations), not necessarily the beekeepers.
Sorry for the rant, getting off my soap box now, but being right in the middle of it I am fuming.
No need to apologize. Having seen it all before, I am fuming on your behalf!
Too slow to start baiting the wild hives and too fast to let the pros move their hives. End result is red dots appearing on a map of NSW almost daily 
