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Untold more bees and hives will be killed off across New South Wales as authorities race to contain a varroa mite outbreak threatening Australia's $70 million bee industry.

Beekeepers were yesterday given permission by NSW government officials to conditionally move hives at-risk of being submerged by rising floodwaters as wild weather complicates eradication efforts.

If apiarists relocate any hives to higher ground, they cannot shift them back once the waters recede, the NSW Department of Primary Industries declared.

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Sunday saw more bad news for beekeepers in the state, with the varroa mite found at three properties in Tanilba Bay, Salt Ash and Mayfield West.

Those discoveries led to officials moving the Port Stephens Peninsula inside a 10km eradication zone, meaning all hives within the hot spot will be systematically euthanised.

Exclusion zone rings, which range in severity, now stretch around 210 kilometres from Sydney's north to Forster on the NSW Mid North Coast.

The department has forbidden bees from being moved across NSW.

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READ MORE: Six killed after massive glacier chunk crashes down mountain

Varroa mite was detected 10 days ago in biosecurity surveillance hives at the Port of Newcastle.

It's unclear where the mites originated from, potentially a ship at the port or possibly from a local hive already unknowingly contaminated.

There are fears the varroa mite, which spreads viruses that cripple a bee's ability to fly, gather food, pollinate or emerge from their cell to be born, may now swarm Australia.

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An industrial support ship in the South China Sea sunk in a storm with the possible loss of more than two dozen crew members, rescue services in Hong Kong said.

Authorities dispatched planes and helicopters to aid in the rescue, with at least three people from the crew of 30 brought to safety as of 5:30 pm local time Saturday.

Photos released by the Hong Kong Government Flying Service showed one crew member being winched up to a rescue helicopter as big waves lashed the sinking vessels, which had broken up in two parts.

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The accident occurred about 300 kilometres south of Hong Kong.

The Flying Service did not give the name or origin of the vessel.

It said in a statement that crew members were negotiating difficulties brought on by Severe Tropical Storm Chaba, which was packing winds of 110 kilometres per hour.

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READ MORE: Six killed after massive glacier chunk crashes down Italian mountain

The storm made landfall in the western part of the coastal province of Guangdong on Saturday.

The Hong Kong service sent two fixed-wing aircraft and four helicopters for the rescue effort.

Hong Kong authorities issued a warning over the typhoon on Thursday, during the highly anticipated visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The grand opening of a new Hong Kong Palace Museum that was meant to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the city's handover from British to Chinese rule was postponed until Sunday because of the storm.

With agencies

A large chunk of an Alpine glacier broke loose Sunday afternoon and roared down a mountainside in Italy, sending ice, snow and rock slamming into hikers on a popular trail on the peak and killing at least six and injuring eight, authorities said.

There could be about 10 people missing, Civil Protection official Gianpaolo Bottacin was quoted as saying by the online version of Italian daily Corriere della Sera. But Bottacin later told state television that it wasn't yet possible to provide a firm number.

The glacier, in the Marmolada range, is the largest in the Dolomite mountains in northeastern Italy and people ski there in the winter. But the glacier has been rapidly melting away in recent years.

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Experts at Italy's state-run CNR research center, which has a polar sciences institute, says the glacier won't exist anymore in the next 25-30 years and most of its volume is already gone. The Mediterranean basin, shared by southern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, has been identified by UN experts as a "climate change hot spot," likely to suffer heat waves and water shortages, among other consequences.

By Sunday evening, officials were still working to determine just how many hikers were in the area when the ice avalanche struck, said Walter Milan, a spokesperson for the national Alpine rescue corps who provided the death and injury toll.

Rescuers were checking license plates in the parking lot as part of checks to determine how many people might be unaccounted for, a process that could take hours, Milan told The Associated Press by telephone.

"We saw dead (people) and enormous chunks of ice, rock,'' exhausted-looking rescuer Luigi Felicetti told Italian state TV.

Nationalities or ages of the dead weren't immediately available, Milan said. Of the eight hospitalised survivors, two were in grave condition, authorities said.

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The fast-moving avalanche "came down with a roar the could be heard at great distance,'' local online media site ildolomiti.it said.

Earlier, the National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps tweeted that the search of the involved area of the Marmolada peak involved at least five helicopters and rescue dogs.

Temporarily, the search for any more victims or missing was halted while rescuers evaluate the risk that more of the glacier could break off, Walter Cainelli, after conducting a rescue mission with a search dog, told state TV.

Rescuers said blocks of ice were continuing to tumble down. In early evening, a light rain began to fall.

The SUEM dispatch service, which is based in the nearby Veneto region, said 18 people who were above the area where the ice struck would be evacuated by the Alpine rescue corps.

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But Milan said some on the slope might be able to get down by themselves, including by using the peak's cable car.

SUEM said the avalanche consisted of a "pouring down of snow, ice and rock." The detached section is know as a serac, or pinnacle of ice.

Marmolada, towering about 3.3km at its top, is the highest peak in the eastern Dolomites, offering spectacular views of other Alpine peaks.

The Alpine rescue service said in a tweet that the segment broke off near Punta Rocca (Rock Point), "along the itinerary normally used to reach the peak."

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the section of ice to break away and rush down the peak's slope. But the intense heat wave gripping Italy since late June could be a factor.

"The temperatures of these days clearly had influence" on the glacier's partial collapse, Maurizio Fugatti, the president of Trento Province, which borders Marmolada, told Sky TG24 news.

But Milan stressed that high heat, which soared unusually above 10C on Marmolada's peak in recent days, was only one possible factor in Sunday's tragedy.

"There are so many factors that could be involved,'' Milan said. Avalanches in general aren't predictable, he said, and heat's influence on a glacier "is even more impossible to predict."

In separate comments to Italian state television, Milan called the recent temperatures "extreme heat" for the peak. "Clearly it's something abnormal."

The injured were flown to several hospitals in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto, according to rescue services.

Victorian Labor MP Jane Garrett will be farewelled with a state funeral, after she died from breast cancer at the age of 49.

The former emergency services minister was diagnosed with the disease in 2016 and announced late last year she would not stand for re-election.

The mother-of-three died on Saturday.

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Her family said she was a "fierce advocate for women and those most disadvantaged,"

"We will remember Jane always for her contagious love of life and people; her intense compassion and the drive, which made her a very fierce advocate for women and those most disadvantaged," they said.

"Her intellect, wit and generosity are irreplaceable."

Fellow politicians and political staff have also paid tribute.

"Jane was one of a kind. She lit up the room. Every room she went into," Government spokesperson Ben Carroll said.

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https://twitter.com/DanielAndrewsMP/status/1543465362658066432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Premier Daniel Andrews spoke of Jane's "significant contribution to Victoria".

"I cannot imagine the grief her family, particularly her three children, must be feeling at this incredibly difficult time, my thoughts are with them," he said.

"Jane was a passionate advocate for the rights of working people and spent her career fighting for safer, secure jobs.

Her commitment to education, equality and social justice for all was clear."

Garrett entered parliament in 2010 and was promoted to Emergency Services Minister four years later.

She resigned from cabinet in 2016 amid the fallout from a bitter dispute with the firefighters union.

That same year she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Garrett moved to the upper house two years later.

Last year, she announced she would leave parliament at November's state election.

She had three children, Molly, aged 19, 15-year-old Sasha, and Max, 10.

Details of the state funeral will be released in coming days.

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