bees.

[velvetsiren]

hello..........great forum.

Apart from sugarbag bees, do other native bees produce honey?
im in melbourne and wonder if there are any bees around here that produce honey, im not talking euro trash bees.

i have done a little reading on bees here but as far as i can see i cant find any info about honey and bees in victoria.

was honey a food to the kulin? or did they source there sweetness from banksia and other nectars and manna?

thanks

VS

[Bluetongue]

Welcome to the forum, VS

Honey's mentioned in Koorie Plants Koorie People, the book by Nelly Zola and Beth Gott. Native bee honey. I don't know any more about it though - would like to!

[velvetsiren]

thanks Bluetongue

i have been meaning to go out and track some bees for a while now, i will carry some flour with me next time i go out bush and see if i can follow some local bees around as i have seen a few bees lately around the place.

you can learn alot from a bee

but yeah would be good to know for certain.

[Bluetongue]

CERES in Melbourne might have more info.

Another forum member has kindly recommended this site

http://www.zeta.org.au/~anbrc/links.html

(in response to my Q about how to build a simple hive for native bees)

Let us know how you go, VS.

[velvetsiren]

thanks

am thinking of going for a walk in the bush tomorrow so will keep my eyes on the lookout for bees.

CERES is great was there jsut yesterday.

got some murnong and some chocolate lillies.

[eataust]

As far as I'm aware, all bees produce honey - the quantities are what vary. Here's the actual answer to your question: http://www.zeta.org.au/~anbrc/faq.html#Anchor-Q6-23240.

You'll find all sorts of useful stuff on the main site at: http://www.zeta.org.au/~anbrc/

Apparently people used to dab a feather on the back of a bee with resin, to track it back to its nest and thus find the honey :)

[clare_b74]

Hmm, while I'm not casting doubt on the references cited above, I've recently been chatting to an entomologist at Museum Victoria about bees and he conformed that there aren't any (good?) honey-producing bees in Victoria or South Australia

We were both spewing about that!

But yeah, if anyone knows otherwise, it would be the people behind the zeta.org website

C

[eataust]

Actually your information correlates with what's said on the link - the "social bees" that produce honey are all naturally from the Australian warm/tropical areas. However, you can domesticate them to an extent and have one's own honey native bees if you look after 'em anywhere ...

[clare_b74]

Yeah EA, you probably could do that - but what do you think they'd do to indigenous bee species? I really don't know anything about it, but given how many feral Apis mellifera there are around, I doubt - if I was a southern species native bee - I'd want *any* more bees on my patch!

Then again, I've been reading about this US disappearing hive syndrome and some other nasty virus thing threatening to wipe out horticulture-as-we-know-it lately (and have typically forgotten all the pertinent details, sorry if you want to follow it up!). So I've been thinking that what is currently touted as a major potential catastrophe for the farmers around these parts could turn out to be a blessing in disguise? If native bees are resistent to whatever it is that's the problem, maybe hordes of honey-producing, crop-pollinating natives could be brought down south and I'd finally get me honey But if it's a something that destroys communal bee species, and it's only the communal natives that produce honey, I'm stuffed again eh?

Does anyone know what on earth I'm crapping on about?! C

[velvetsiren]

thanks for the links

i think the trigona bees might find the climate a struggle but if you look after them they might go alright down here.

[Bluetongue]

Yeah Clare I'm pretty sure I know what you're crapping on about and I don't have the details to hand either. Interesting debate.

[JumpedAngel]

Does anyone know if Homalictus bees are social? I swear I must have photographed literally hundreds of them during the past few days in East Gippsland. I know they are only small (5mm) but who knows.

Another apparent native black bee with a single yellow spot on the sides of its thorax was at least as prevalant as the European bees, however, I have been unable to identify them yet. So don't give up yet vs, there may still bee hope.

[bunyanuternie]

We have quite a lot her in our forest and they are quite easy to find , but it is quite mild weather most of the year , I have tasted their honey but normally leave them bee , I have transplanted a nest into a big Ironbark 7 years ago successfully and I check them regularly to see if they are OK , Ian

[aussiebeewebsite]

There has been quite a bit of discussion in this forum about which native bees occur in which areas. I run the Aussie Bee website [previously on the zeta.org domain] and can shed a bit of light on this topic.

Unfortunately clare_b74 is correct: the native stingless honey bees cannot survive down south. They are tropical species and can only fly above 18 degrees C. In Victoria and South Australia they are unable to collect enough food to survive and their broods also get fatally chilled by the overnight temperatures. Harvesting of their Sugarbag honey can only be done in northern NSW, QLD or northern parts of the NT.

However, there are many other types of native bees in southern Australia. Although these do not store honey in their hives, they can be great pollinators of your bush foods garden. Examples include the beautiful blue banded bees and the fascinating leafcutter bees.

Native stingless bees and blue banded bees are also showing great potential as pollinators of crops inside greenhouses.

To find out what bees live in your area, visit this page on our Aussie Bee website: http://www.aussiebee.com.au/beesinyourarea.html

[Note: we have now moved our Aussie Bee website to http://www.aussiebee.com.au ]

JumpedAngel also wanted to know if Homalictus bees were social. These tiny bees certainly fly in immense clouds around flowering plants in summer. However, they do not build social nests like honey bees do. They nest in burrows in the ground. Large numbers of bees may live in the one burrow. However, each female lays eggs in her own tiny brood cells and there is no queen bee or worker bees. They do not store honey in their nests. Under a microscope these Homalictus bees look like glittering jewels with gleaming metallic colours.

Kind regards
Anne Dollin

[JumpedAngel]

Thanks for the info Anne, and with all due respect, I disagree, although in the same breath you could well be correct.

I've been trying to piece together some of our early history and had noted that Eyre and Bunce were the people who appear to have first recorded the story of how aboriginal people track bees back to their hive, surprisingly they both arrived in Hobart on the "Ellen" on March 2, 1833.

I havn't tracked down Eyre's version yet but Bunce relocated to Australia Felix (now the state of Victoria) in 1839 only 5 years after the second attempt at establishing a colony here and immediately took off for a casual stroll over to Western Port Bay with a band of aboriginal people and it was on this trip that he records his version

...A hive of native bees had been discovered by one of the children -- a yan yean, or boy -- who had caught one of the little insects, not much larger than a musquito, while dipping its little proboscis into the blossom of a native honysuckle, Banksia, extracting from the nectaries of the flower its sweet juices. The little fellow caught and marked by the boy with a feather-like seed of a composite plant, and following to its home in a neighboring gum tree; thus betraying the little industious comunity of which it formed a member. The boy returned to the camp, and communicated the result of his discovery, when two large hollow sheets of bark were procured, thus forming bowls, which were carried to the tree and speedily filled with pure honey.

The native bees are very small, half the size of a common house-fly, and are stingless.

Regretably Bunce was a botanist not an entomologist, otherwise he might have described the insect, Bunce had spent 6 years in Tasmania describing the plants there then shortly after moving to Victoria was employed by Ludwig Leichhardt as the expedition botanist on the second failed attempt to cross the continent from east to west. (We all think we know how the third failed attempt ended however, I was surprised)

I had held off on this till now because I didn't know earlier on which of his may explorations, Bunce had observed this, but recently I managed to track down one of his books and was finally able to confirm the story.

So now I'm left wondering if there is a native bee still out there, or if this bee has now been displaced by its European cousins and ofcourse what the beastie looked like.

I have to admit here that as far as I am concerned Bunce was a hero of Australian ethnobotany and was clearly one of the few who really tried to get to know aboriginal culture and understand and record their knowledge.

His major work has just recently become available again, only the second time since its first print in 1859, I got a copy of the second edition and only half way through it but if you like that kind of stuff then this rates very highly

http://www.angusrobertson.com.au/search/daniel+bunce/