AceNewsDesk – If you want flowers or fruits in your garden, they’ll need pollinating, and native bees are among Australia’s most powerful pollinators.
Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Jun.15: 2024: ABC Environment & Climate News Report: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/YouMeUs2
In recent months there has been a mass exodus of backyard beekeepersdue to the pest Varroa mite.
But because native bees are not directly impacted by the Varroa mitethey are a great (and often stingless) alternative to European honey bees.
They are also facing their own fight for survival due to factors including habitat loss, overuse of insecticides, climate change and natural disasters such as the Black Summer bushfires.
So whether you’re interested in the sweet benefits of backyard beekeeping, having your plants pollinated or simply helping our bees out, here are some ways to make your garden a friendly place for native bees.
Why native bees are better pollinators
There are more than 1,600 described species of native bees in Australia ā most of which are solitary, meaning they don’t live in hives.
Native stingless bees are a notable exception and, like European honey bees, are social and honey-producing.
Tim Heard is an entomologist and former long-time CSIRO research scientist, who now runs a Meanjin/Brisbane-based business that provides education and consulting services around native bees.
He says native bees are regarded as keystone species “that really help to make the ecosystem tick, and they do that by the pollination services they provide”.
“Bees visit flowers for food, but in doing so, they cross-pollinate, so they move pollen from one individual plant to another,” Dr Heard says.
Melbourne/Naarm-based founder and CEO of advocacy group Save the Bees Australia Simon Mulvany agrees, and says native bees are often better pollinators than European honey bees.
“They do a different type of pollination, which is called buzz pollination, and that means that they sort of vibrate or headbutt really, really quickly to release the pollen, whereas the honey bee uses a sort of static electricity to collect the pollen,” he says.
Backyard beekeeping
But Mr Mulvany says while European honey bees produce much larger quantities of honey than native bees, there are greater responsibilities involved with keeping them.
“You do have to intervene with them a couple of times a year, at least, whereas with the native bees, you sort of can just let them do their thing,” he says.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Dr Heard, who adds there are other benefits to keeping native stingless bees.
“They are generally just a little bit less conspicuous, neighbours are less likely to complain about them, and ā¦ they can be used in kindergartens, schools and community gardens without any of the stinging risk.”
Unlike European honey bees, you also don’t need a sprawling backyard to keep native stingless bees, which will thrive in a small wooden hive in a small yard ā or even on a balcony.
“You can keep them on your apartment balcony in the middle of the Gold Coast and they’ll do probably very well,” Dr Heard says.
“I wouldn’t go more than about 10 storeys, that might get a bit far for them to fly.”
Attracting native bees to your garden
If you’re not ready to commit to keeping bees, there are a few things you can do to encourage them if you’re interested in boosting the biodiversity of your garden.
First and foremost, Dr Heard recommends limiting your use of pesticides.
“Don’t use insecticides would be the first thing I’d say, that’s an easy one. Let nature survive; live and let live,” he says.
Secondly, it’s important to establish a suitable natural habitat, which means a suitably diverse garden that includes native plant species.
“A lawn is not habitat for many animals, it doesn’t really provide much in the way of resources for many animals but a native garden, with a diversity of plants that flower, that fruit, that have flashes of new leaf growth ā that will provide food and habitat for all kinds of animals, not just bees.”
Dr Heard suggests eschewing large hardware chains, which “tend to go for large numbers of genetically uniform, introduced plant species”, and instead consult a local nursery.
Mr Mulvany says local council websites will often have a list of locally endemic plants that will attract blue-banded bees and other native species, and councils “will sometimes give out free indigenous plants because they’re the plants they want planted”.
Building bee hotels is also a great way to attract solitary bees to your property, Dr Heard says, and again recommends building your own, rather than opting for a mass-produced, prefabricated version.
“Pieces of bamboo are great and mud bricks [attract] the blue-banded bees and other bees that like to nest in soil, and also chunks of timber with holes drilled in them that bees will find and build their little nests in.
“Putting in a little oasis in your yard, growing some bee-loving plants on your front footpath is definitely a useful thing to do for bee and other insect diversity.”
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