Beekeeper-led · chemical-free focus · complements official reporting
Varroa surveillance — helping beekeepers check whether treatments are actually working
With Varroa now established across much of eastern Australia — and chemical resistance confirmed in 2026 — the question has changed from “do I have mites?” to “did my treatment actually work?” This is a beekeeper-led monitoring initiative to help answer that, region by region.
Reporting Varroa is a legal obligation. This tool does not replace that — it sits alongside it, helping you and your community see what’s working.
Why this matters now
For most of 2022–2025, the focus was detection — finding out where Varroa had spread. That has changed. In 2026, resistance to the two main synthetic treatment groups (pyrethroids and formamidines) was confirmed in parts of Australia. A strip in the hive is no longer a guarantee the mites are dying.
The official advice now is to monitor before and after treating, to confirm the treatment actually reduced your mite load — and to rotate chemical groups. This initiative is built around exactly that question: a simple, standardised alcohol-wash record that shows whether your mites dropped below the action threshold after treatment, and helps build an honest, aggregate picture of what’s working across each region.
How it complements official reporting
This is important, so we say it plainly: detecting Varroa is a notifiable matter, and reporting it to your state authority is required by law. This tool does not replace that obligation, and it is not an official government system.
What it does is sit alongside the official channels — helping individual beekeepers track whether their own treatments are working over time, and (for those who choose to contribute) building an anonymised, aggregate view of treatment performance and mite pressure by region. Always report through your official state channel first. Use this as a practical monitoring aid on top of that.
Why every wash counts
This only works if beekeepers contribute. One person’s wash is a single data point; hundreds of washes across a region become a picture nobody could see on their own. The more beekeepers take part, the clearer and more useful that picture becomes — which is why every record you submit genuinely matters, even if your hives look fine.
We’re also honest about what the data can and can’t tell us yet, and we publish findings in the order they become trustworthy:
- Regional mite pressure comes first. Once enough washes come in from an area, we can show how mite levels are tracking there — this becomes clear with a modest amount of data.
- Which treatments are working takes more. To say honestly whether a particular product is still effective — or showing resistance — we need many before-and-after records for that product. This picture builds more slowly, and we won’t rush it.
- We never publish thin numbers. If too few beekeepers have reported something, we hold it back rather than draw a conclusion that isn’t yet reliable — and we never show anything that could identify an individual beekeeper or apiary. You’ll see “not enough data yet” rather than a misleading figure.
In other words: the resistance picture you actually want — “is my treatment still working?” — is exactly the one that needs the most contributions to answer well. So the single most useful thing you can do is take part, and keep taking part.
How we handle your data
If you contribute, you’re trusting us with information about your bees and where they are — so we keep this plain. We collect your wash data, your apiary’s GPS location (to place your data in the right region), and an identifier so repeat submissions aren’t double-counted. Contact details are only collected if you opt in.
The raw data is held privately by BeesFriend and shared with no one. Your exact location is never published or shared — including with authorities. Published findings only ever show anonymised, regional patterns, and you can have your data removed at any time. This is separate from official reporting, which remains your legal responsibility. Read the full detail on how we handle your data.
Choose your state
Reporting rules, thresholds and the current situation differ by state, so each has its own page and recording tool. More states will be added as the initiative grows.
Available now:
Other states and territories are planned. If you keep bees elsewhere and would like to help bring this to your region, get in touch.
Who’s behind this
BeesFriend is a chemical-free, no-kill bee rescue in South East Melbourne. We run the annual World Bee Day event at CSIRO and mentor other beekeepers. As synthetic treatments lose ground to resistance, good monitoring and resilient, low-chemical beekeeping matter more than ever — and that’s the practice this initiative supports.