{"id":899571,"date":"2026-09-21T02:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T02:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899571\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T02:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T02:32:11","slug":"more-than-800000-bees-stolen-across-far-north-queensland-in-sophisticated-operation-queensland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899571\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 800,000 bees stolen across far north Queensland in \u2018sophisticated\u2019 operation | Queensland"},"content":{"rendered":"

An estimated 800,000 bees, worth tens of thousands of dollars, have been stolen from properties in far north Queensland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The industry is already reeling from the this month\u2019s arrival<\/a> of the varroa mite parasite.<\/p>\n

Tom Bidner, an apiarist from the Atherton Tablelands, west of Cairns, said 44 colonies had been stolen from three different beekeepers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t over yet,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got so many colonies to get through. We\u2019re still getting around and checking all our different sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

He estimated that each hive contained at least 20,000 bees, making it a total of more than 800,000.<\/p>\n

The alleged thefts happened on multiple different properties in different areas and required a sophisticated operation and specialist equipment.<\/p>\n

Rather than risking early detection by stealing an entire box, they took out what\u2019s known as the brood box. That means the hive appears unchanged from afar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re rocking up with a truckload of gear, basically, and they\u2019re transferring our frames into their boxes \u2026 and putting our hives back together, so it doesn\u2019t sort of alert any of the growers that it looks like someone\u2019s been in and done such a thing,\u201d Bidner said.<\/p>\n

The thieves also didn\u2019t take any honey, which was left on the hive.<\/p>\n

He suspects that the culprits are probably people from within the industry.<\/p>\n

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The apiarists will lose not just the stolen insects but the value of the pollination contracts, which can run into the thousands of dollars, he said. The grower will also lose out due to lower quality flowering.<\/p>\n

Bidner said it was the biggest theft in memory, though far from the first.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now the peak of the avocado season in far north Queensland, so hives are deployed at properties across the area on contracted pollination work for local growers. Others are just left on the side of the highway.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecurity wise, in the past, we\u2019ve let the bees do the majority of the job \u2026 from time to time, it definitely happens you\u2019ll have someone try and come and tamper with a hive,\u201d he said. \u201cThey usually get about 30 seconds into the job and they\u2019re gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Det Sgt Ben Cross from the Mareeba rural and stock crime squad told the ABC<\/a> he also believed the culprit to be a \u201ccommercial farmer\u201d rather than a hobbyist.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the far north Queensland region recorded its first detection of the varroa mite just a week ago south of Cairns.<\/p>\n

Megan O\u2019Mara, a professor at the University of Queensland, said more than $100m had been spent<\/a> preventing the spread of the parasite since it arrived in Newcastle in 2022 but available treatments were of limited effectiveness.<\/p>\n

The cost to the industry of uncontrolled spread is estimated at as much as $1bn<\/a> over 30 years. Australia officially gave up eradicating the parasite<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Mara is part of an international effort to develop a more effective treatment. One of the leading candidates uses MRNA technology originally pioneered during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2018d love to say it\u2019s around the corner. Yeah, it\u2019s it\u2019s a few years off, but we\u2019re making progress,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bidner said the thefts and the parasite were a \u201cdouble whammy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Far north Queensland was unusually exposed, he said, because the hot weather meant bees brood all year. The parasite reproduced in the brood. That meant they would always have to be on the lookout.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t detected mites in our colonies yet but we should be putting our time and energy into that,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd instead, we\u2019ve had this spate of theft.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An estimated 800,000 bees, worth tens of thousands of dollars, have been stolen from properties in far north…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-899571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}