Native Australian bees

[GFHomebrew]

gday all as I wasn't brewing this last weekend I was devoting my hard earned free time to one of my other hobbies keeping Australian Native singles bees. I have been awaiting this moment for over two years and building the new hive I ended up transferring some brood into on the weekend. I just thought you all may be interested

Photo one is of the parent colony that oval shaped cell structure is the brood.
Photo two the separated brood at home in its new home.
Photo three some of the sugar bag honey relevant term for the pods they stoor their honey in opposed to European bees. They produce a measly.500ml per year honey.
Photo 4 is their new hive positioned in old hives spot.

Well I hope you feel enlightened . Cheers!

 

[Head First]

Good for you!! Bees are very important to life as we know it and any help they can get is good help.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

yes big misconception, Bees, non poisonous snakes, bats all part of the ecosystem that most people just don't get

 

[GFHomebrew]

Yea my trade is in pest control so I guess I'm giving some back

 

[Mark D Pirate]

And unlike almost everything else in Australia our bees have no stingers , completely harmless !

we had a large hive in a camp i worked on and some fool asked a pest controller to kill them , he wouldn't so they got someone who would

 

[GFHomebrew]

And unlike almost everything else in Australia our bees have no stingers , completely harmless !

we had a large hive in a camp i worked on and some fool asked a pest controller to kill them , he wouldn't so they got someone who would

Yep us pesties wall any pestie worth his salt would tell em to grow a brain. Yep them little diggers are harmless worst they can do to you is fly in your ear or up ya nose. Best back yard pet because the best thing you can do for them is leave them alone they take care of themselves. Just gotta put them in a shaded spot for around noon so they don't get cooked on our hot summer days.

 

[GFHomebrew]

Bump so others can see.

All these hives are still well and thriving 2022.

An exclamation for the first pic this is in a broccoli box given to me by an old client of mine to see if Aus stingless bee can survive in Styrofoam box.

My opinion yup I've since built a ply box around them only because they were drilling through the Styrofoam this is my oldest hive!


That second photo is just the "Brood cells" no pollon no honey no resin.
i took these cells from the broccoli hive bix.
The larger cells in there are "queen" cells these will emerge to potentially carry on as successor if no queen has been found.

I place this new hive section in exactly the same position as the old hive to recieve their worker bees.
This helps in a new hive splits success.
Every thing is against them in this vulnerable moment.

The last photo is my hive design "Impa Hive" designed from "bob the bee man" aus who went to South America to study their native bee population...
It's a segmented horizontal hive design (unlike European bee hive design).
Native bees are almost complete opposite...

Before colonisation Australia only had Native stingless bees .

 

[Sunfire96]

Glad the hives are healthy!!

North American doesn't have any native bees that colonize in a hive, all of our honey bees are native to Europe. But we have some great native bee pollinators; carpenter bees, bumblebees, Mason bees, etc. They all pollinate different types of plants and are crucial to our agriculture. If we only had honey bees, only a small percentage of plants and crops would be pollinated. All of our native bees love Mason bee hives, which have multiple tunnels and burrows for them to use, usually made of different thicknesses of bamboo inside a house structure.

Yay for native pollinators! And my list doesn't include birds, moths, bats, butterflies, and tons of other types of pollinating animals

 

[Zambi]

I just wish we had non stinging wasps...

 

[GFHomebrew]

Glad the hives are healthy!!

North American doesn't have any native bees that colonize in a hive, all of our honey bees are native to Europe. But we have some great native bee pollinators; carpenter bees, bumblebees, Mason bees, etc. They all pollinate different types of plants and are crucial to our agriculture. If we only had honey bees, only a small percentage of plants and crops would be pollinated. All of our native bees love Mason bee hives, which have multiple tunnels and burrows for them to use, usually made of different thicknesses of bamboo inside a house structure.

Yay for native pollinators! And my list doesn't include birds, moths, bats, butterflies, and tons of other types of pollinating animals

Amen we've got over 1800 solitary bees in Aus one of them the blue banded bee is my favorite probably the most noticeable it's quite loud when it's flying it's a buzz pollinator.

 

[Donoroto]

I remember Ben you showing us the hive on one of the early Zoom calls, that was really interesting.