Well, lucky us so far, the last continent stronghold of no varroa- I have been following American beekeping for a few years and admire your resourcefulness and tenacity greatly and am terrified of the impact here. A couple of weeks ago varroa was detected at a port sentinel detection hive, and all hives in the 50km radius were burned, but one commercial beekeeper had it in his, looked like it had been there a little while, and had unknowingly sent out nucs far across the state a month or two earlier. so it is a waiting game, hope, just do your best now. This occured in the state of NSW, which is immediately adjacent to and on top of the small southern state of Victoria ( where I live). They are going to go ahead with the almond pollination in northern Victoria in 2 months. If you want to breed a superbug, that's how you do it, get hives from allover the country and put them in high density for a few weeks. I think the almond pollination is a terrible idea for varroa potential this year and only allow hives from other states.
If varroa has indeed gained a sneaky foothold, the state of Western Australia would be spared for now. WA has very unique flora has very strict quarantine and nothing crosses the desert, it would have to arrive independently by sea. The other place untouched would be our southern island of Tasmania. I'm going off to rock in a corner in terror and anticipation now.
