THERE is a very good reason why the honey produced by Australia's bees is considered to be among the world's cleanest and most delicious.
The country is one of the last in the world to resist the insidious encroachment of the Varroa mite, a pinhead-sized insect that has devastated bee populations around the world in the past 30 years.
Australia's sea border and some original quarantine methods have kept the deadly mite at arm's length.
The nation's apiarists manage their hives without the armoury of chemical sprays that keep bees in Europe, North America and most other places alive. Honey in Australia is still the product of bees doing what they do, with a minimum of human interference.
But the latest report from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, reflecting mainstream opinion on the topic, says an outbreak of Varroa mites here is "almost inevitable".
One strain, known as Varroa destructor, latches on to European honeybees and sucks their blood, weakening bees and spreading viruses and deformities among a colony. The honeybees have no answer to the mites once they enter a colony.
"Bees have been in decline everywhere since Varroa got into the population," said Dr Denis Anderson, a CSIRO virologist and world specialist on bee health.
"In the US, for example, they had about 5 million colonies in 1987 when Varroa first got into the population - now they have about 2.5 million and that's with a lot of expensive chemicals being used.
"It won't destroy the European honeybee completely, but until we come up with some way of controlling the mites bees everywhere are in trouble."
Dr Anderson has made it his crusade to understand and, if possible, overcome the Varroa threat since he began studying the encroachment of Asian honeybees into West Papua in the 1980s. His research led to the recognition of the deadly Varroa destructor strain in 2000.
The mites have now spread further than PNG, and New Zealand's quarantine measures were breached in 2000.
The consequences are not limited to the wellbeing of bee colonies. In Australia, a growing industry is built on bee pollination and transporting mobile hives around the country to pollinate food crops. Almonds, strawberries, apples, pears, cherries and most citrus fruit crops depend either totally or mainly on bees to pollinate.
"If honeybee pollination were to stop immediately and completely, large losses would be felt in a horticulture sector that provides produce valued at around $3.8 billion per annum," the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation report said. "This is because approximately 65 per cent of horticultural and agricultural crops produced in Australia require pollination services from honeybees.
"There is a widely held view in the Australian scientific community that an incursion of the highly destructive Varroa mite, potentially from either New Zealand or Papua New Guinea, is almost inevitable."
The bee community in Australia - which manages about 500,000 productive hives - is preparing for the threat.
Bees buzzing around most of Australia's major sea ports also provide a kind of airborne early-warning system.
A network of 37 strategically placed hives are maintained by a Federal Government grant and regularly studied for any sign of an outbreak.
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