Did you know that we have ten species of Australian native honey bees and that these amazing native bees are stingless?

The commercial honey bee, Apis mellifera, is found all over Australia and is well known to all Australians. However, this commercial honey bee was actually introduced from Europe in 1822.

Australia's stingless bee species are tropical and are found mainly in Queensland, the Northern Territory and in northern Western Australia. In NSW they are mostly restricted to the coastal areas and they cannot survive in Victoria, South Australia or Tasmania. Two common Australian species are Trigona carbonaria and Austroplebeia australis. The Aussie Bee website [www.aussiebee.com.au] provides a list of hive sellers.

The Australian stingless bees usually build their resinous nests inside hollow trees but sometimes in Queensland they use various man made structures such as wall cavities or hollows underneath footpaths.

A wooden hive design has been developed for the Australian stingless bee species. It is built in two parts to allow the nest to be propagated by a splitting technique.

The colony consists of a queen bee, hundreds of sterile worker bees and some male drones. In Trigona carbonaria the tiny brood cells are built in an elegant horizontal spiral comb. Honey and pollen are stored in larger pots around the extremities of the nest cavity.

Our Australian honey bees produce a delicious tangy honey, known to Aboriginal people as 'Sugarbag'. This honey has been harvested by Aboriginal people for thousands of years. Our Australian honey bees produce only about a litre of this precious honey per year -- far less than produced by the introduced honey bees -- however, it has the potential of becoming a valuable niche honey product for Australia.

Our native stingless bees also collect pollen and they are being used in parts of Australia to pollinate crops such as macadamias, watermelons, strawberries and lychees. They like to collect pollen as close as possible to their nests so they can also make good pollinators for crops enclosed in small spaces such as greenhouses.