“I did a quick calculation and worked out there's probably at least a thousand bees on that driveway and then in the grass beside there was probably 8,000 or 10,000 bees and I thought that was pretty unusual."

He feared that if insects were dying, his marron — a type of freshwater crayfish — would be next.

"I also then thought that then – because we had a [suspected] poisoning event from farm chemicals here a few years ago, that there might be an impact on the marron, and there was," he said.

Mr Luckens believes his marron were poisoned by aerial spraying in 2019, but neither he nor the department were able to confirm the cause.

He said in this latest incident the crayfish in two of his 30 ponds — the most elevated on his block — were affected.

"We've probably got upwards of half a ton of marron dead. That's relatively significant for us," 

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101767092