The country's agriculture industry caught a lucky break in March when quarantine officials intercepted a colony of invasive bees carrying a disease that would have a catastrophic impact on food crops if it managed to establish in Australia.
The Asian honey bees infected with varroa mite – a pest that has decimated bee populations on every continent bar Australia – had hitched a ride in a cargo ship from Malaysia and were found in a reel of cables once they reached Brisbane.
To ensure other pest-infected bees cannot find their way into Australia through remote ports, Landcare has launched a fundraising campaign to extend a surveillance program being trialled in Queensland to the rest of the country.
The organisation wants to buy more than 350 special surveillance hives, which have smartphones and sensors that remotely capture images inside the hive that detect when a swarm has arrived. The hive's doors can then be shut remotely to trap the bees inside.
Honey bees are responsible for pollinating hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops, fruit trees, nuts and vegetables; a service worth between $4 billion and $6 billion to the country's agriculture and horticulture sector.
A spokeswoman for Plant Health Australia, which manages the national honey bee pest surveillance program, said 20 remote hives had been successfully trialled around high-risk ports in Brisbane, Darwin, Weipa, Cairns and Gladstone.
The surveillance program, which is jointly funded by the horticultural and honey bee industry and the government, also manages a network of sentinel bee hives at ports such as Port Botany. Bees in those hives are regularly examined for diseases or pests.
Landcare wants to raise enough money to place 378 hives around 42 ports. Each hive costs $800 to build and deliver.
Dave Alden, a senior program manager at the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, said the new hives were more efficient because they only required a person to check them when bees had been trapped inside.
Dr Alden said the consensus among research scientists was that varroa would arrive in Australia at some point.
"But the longer we can keep it out the better," he said.
While a good surveillance system boosted the chance that pests would be intercepted, nothing was foolproof.
"Australia is the last continent to be varroa free. That's testament to the fact that surveillance has been working," he said.
