Judy's Native Stingless Bee Hives garden

This “garden” has been created so that all journals relating to our bee hives can be found in one place.

My husband, Tom, has always had a fascination for the small native stingless bees that had built three hives in cavities in our house. Once I got into gardening I soon realised that these creatures played a significant part in crop pollination, and so I researched them on the internet. Showing this information to Tom was like lighting the touch paper – there was no stopping him. Within no time he had built, redesigned and built more hives to accommodate not only the existing bees in our yard, but also more nests that he rescued from being destroyed at another site. At the time of writing this, we currently have seven hives – two natural and five artificial. We have identified the genus as trigona but have yet to identify the species.

Some information on the bees:

Australian farmers rely heavily on the introduced commercial bee, Apis mellifera, to pollinate their crops. However, we have over 1,500 species of native bees in Australia and for some crops our native bees may be better pollinators.

Australia has about ten species of stingless social native bees (genera Trigona and Austroplebeia). Stingless bees have been shown to be valuable pollinators of crops such as macadamias, mangos, watermelons and lychees. They may also benefit strawberries, citrus, avocados and many others.

Commercial pollination services with Australian stingless bees are already available and have produced impressive results particularly with macadamia and watermelon crops.

A nest or box of Australian stingless bees makes a wonderful addition to your backyard – whether you are a gardener, a small-crop grower or simply a lover of Australian wildlife. They will help to pollinate your treasured plants. They will supply you with a taste of their unique honey. They have interesting social behaviour like the commercial honey bees, but they are stingless and easier to handle. Best of all, they are “true blue” Australian bees. Your observations of their behaviour could help unravel some of the many remaining mysteries of their secret lives within the nest.

Native bee species have shown potential for the pollination of greenhouse crops. Pablo Occhiuzzi of the University of Western Sydney – Hawkesbury found that Australian stingless bees (Trigona) thrived in greenhouse conditions and improved fruit weight and yield in a capsicum crop. Katja Hogendoorn of Flinders University found that green carpenter bees (Xylocopa) effectively pollinated a tomato crop in a flight cage.

Further research is urgently needed to allow commercial development of these species. Nevertheless the use of Australian native bees by the greenhouse crop industry could save our vulnerable environment from the impact of yet another exotic invader.

Stingless bees are highly social insects, with one queen and thousands of workers who live together in a protected place which, in nature, is usually in a hollow tree. Stingless bees inhabit the northern parts of Australia, although on the east coast they reach further south than Sydney. They also occur in other tropical parts of the world. The Australian species are much smaller than European honey bees. They are generally black in colour. As their name suggests, they do not have a sting although than can give you a little bite with their jaws.