A short story about us
The two Varrono founders both come from Tech Industry backgrounds and were drawn to the bee keeping industry merely from a hobbyist perspective.
Timing being everything, just as we began to seriously consider establishing a hive and started to investigate the commitment required, the first detection of Varroa Mite in Australia occurred. This was in June 2022.
How it began
In not wanting to be novices in the middle of a crisis, we delayed our plans of being future apiarists until we believed things had settled down. However, after three years of keenly following the issue, the situation for Australia and our home State of New South Wales, seemed to be declining not improving. The mite was progressively spreading to other states, and the Australian Government had moved from an ‘eradication’ to a ‘management’ strategy.
If that wasn’t enough, our poor bee keepers were finding that their management strategies and current treatments were either:
1. Ineffective.
2. Expensive, in terms of time, lost production (due to chemical treatment) and cost.
3. Often needing the use of chemicals that are potentially fatal to humans. (i.e. Formic Acid).
4. Hampered by other wild bee or close proximity to poorly managed bee populations.
5. Occasional total hive loss even after they believed they had “done everything right”.
Every Apiarist we’ve met has a personal story of devastating losses, and many of the hobbyists have stopped keeping bees altogether. Almost no one seems untouched in some way.
The impact is real
The feared agricultural crop losses due to low pollinator availability, seems to be starting to appear with this being named as a factor in the 2026 Bilpin NSW apple crop losses. (There may be other factors.)
Why we are here
Exploring solutions
Rather than sit ‘on the side-lines’ the Varrono founders felt personally compelled to act, and do what we can to try to improve or resolve as many of these issues as possible.
Initial testing of computer vision technologies and training of AI models, combined with bee cleaning or isolation devices seemed promising. However with further investigation, the hive structure and limited opportunities for effective detection of the mites, proved highly limiting for this path.
Whilst thousands of people are working on this issue every day, from Government, Education, Researchers and private entities, and have been for over 40 years, to us there are no good solutions which meet both the hobbist and commercial markets.