A buzz over native bees

Stingless bees (Tetragonula carbonaria) are a native Australian bee found in the warmer regions of Australia.

After hearing about this type of bee, Ku-ring-gai Council community volunteer program co-ordinator Peter Clarke decided to set up his own hive of stingless bees.

“I had heard about them and had some money left over at the end of the financial year and bought a hive,” he said.

Since then, Mr Clarke has headed a program within the council to provide local households with a hive each.

“People are intrigued by them because they are hard working, thrifty and well organised insects – they have all the positives of bees minus the sting.”

Mr Clarke said stingless bees “ticked a whole lot of boxes”.

“You can tack a lot of things on such as pollination, which is a great thing, but the program is more about trying to connect people to insects.”

While most Australians preferred to kill insects rather than encourage them to hang around, Mr Clarke said most insects were beneficial, especially bees.

“It sounds a bit whacky but we want to encourage people to put the hives on their balconies and establish a relationship with them,” he said.

“Maybe they will think ‘oh maybe I shouldn’t blanket spray my house’.”

The council has been overwhelmed with the programs response, with 250 hives in new homes already.

“There is a waiting list of about 150 people as well,” Mr Clarke said.

The hives, which cost about $450 each, are being given away by the Ku-ring-gai Council through the program which takes the sting out of buying them for residents.

“Once someone receives a hive, it is theirs to do what they please with,” he said.

“If they move they can take them with them because I don’t want to take them off them – it would be like separating someone from Lassie.”

To create more hives, Mr Clarke said they were asking hive owners to allow the council to go to their home to “split” the hives.

“We can split the hives and turn one into two – it costs a bit in staff time and for the empty hive but not quite as much as $450 for buying the whole package outright.”

The stingless bees are popular in orchards and hobby farms, according to Mr Clarke, who said they seemed to prefer blue, purple and yellow flowers.

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

While some honey can be extracted from the hives, stingless bees produce very little honey compared to their stinging counterparts.

Stingless bees only produce about half a kilogram of honey per year, while Dubbo apiarist Dane Cooper said commercial honeybees produced about 200kg in a good season.

Mr Cooper said while both stingless and honeybees were efficient pollinators, honeybees had the added benefit of producing a second product for the domestic and export market.

“Native bees would be great to have available commercially but pollination and honey production go hand-in-hand so we really need the two (commodities) in a large scale operation,” Mr Cooper said.

Another reason for the lack of large scale stingless bee operations was because the species was “temperature dependant”.

The climate of Queensland and the Northern Territory is ideal for stingless bees because they are tropical species.

They also thrive in northern NSW and on the NSW Mid North Coast.

Wild populations of stingless bees are found in Sydney, on the eastern side of the Blue Mountains and in coastal areas down to Bega.

However, the climate in these areas is marginal for stingless bees, and boxed hives need to be carefully sited and managed.

Harvesting honey from hives is not recommended in these areas.

The bees will not fly below 18 degrees Celsius and they need the excess honey collected during summer to survive the winter months.

The honeybee, however, is far more accepting and adaptable to temperatures above 35 degC.

Although there were some commercial crop pollination services utilising stingless bees, Mr Cooper said honey production was too large an industry.

“I’ve been getting stung for more than a decade now and it doesn’t bother me anymore, so I’ll stick with the stingers.”