"Sweet success
Reporter: Sean Murphy
First Published: 12/02/2006
SALLY SARA: Moving on, and in Australia, European honey bees have long been recognised for their importance in pollinating food crops worth billions of dollars. But a relative newcomer, at least in scientific terms, could one day play a role just as crucial. They are Australian native stingless bees, which are also in growing demand for their unique aromatic honey known as Sugarbag.
SEAN MURPHY: They look like small bush flies and largely go unnoticed in the wild. Even scientists admit there's much to learn about Australia's native bees.
TIM HEARD: There are about 1,500 different species of native bees described in this country. But the actual figure may be twice that high. There may be about 3,000 species. 1,500 or so are just waiting to be described. The vast majority of Australian native bees are solitary insects. They just go about their life like a beetle or a butterfly. They don't really have a social life with others of their same species, whereas our native Australian stingless bees live in colonies of many thousands of individuals that work together.
SEAN MURPHY: For CSIRO entomologist and bee keeper Tim Heard, stingless native bees are more than just a curiosity. He believes they could be an important insurance policy for Australia's horticulture industries. Diseases and pests such as the veroamite have ravaged European honey bee populations around the world and a quarantine breach in Australia could have devastating consequences for food crops.
TIM HEARD: Some believe it's only a matter of time before it does reach Australia. Once it does reach here, it will be much more difficult to keep honey bees here and feral populations of honey bees - populations that occur in the wild unmanaged by people - will be negatively affected as well. And these bees provide a very important pollination service for many crop species. Those bees will no longer be available. They will no longer be there to provide a free pollination service to our orchardists, and that makes, that provides many opportunities for the use of native bee species.
SEAN MURPHY: Some social species of stingless native bees such as Trigona carbonaria are already being used to pollinate crops like these macadamias in the Northern Rivers regions of NSW.
MARK GROSSKOPF: About 16 years ago I was introduced to native bees by a friend. During that time I learnt a lot of management techniques. In the year 2000, I realised that there was an economic value put on these native bees that was well underestimated.
SEAN MURPHY: Mark and Kim Grosskopf run a professional pollination service and have had success with avocados, melons, strawberries, apples and macadamias.
MARK GROSSKOPF: They're a lot easier to manage because they're a lot lighter hive. They pose no threat to humans, so - naturally being stingless they pose no threat. Honey bees are incidental pollinators. Their main role is the collection of nectar. Australian native bees are active pollinators and their main role is the collection and transfer of pollen.
SEAN MURPHY: What sort of feedback have you had from the producers who have been using your service?
MARK GROSSKOPF: I've had a lot of good response back from them and so much that they usually order 12 months ahead.
SEAN MURPHY: Macadamia grower Frank Adcock runs a1,200 tree orchard near Bangalow in the Northern Rivers. He believes Trigona carbonaria bees can deliver three times the nut set that honey bees can. While drought reduced the region's overall macadamia production last year, his farm increased its yield.
FRANK ADCOCK: While most growers in the area had a drop in crop, I had an increase of about 100% in kernel I delivered to the factory, although my trees are still growing. It was a bad year and the production was quite good. I was quite pleased.
SEAN MURPHY: And you'd put that down entirely to your bees?
FRANK ADCOCK: I put that down mainly to the Trigona bee and the way they foraged for pollen.
SEAN MURPHY: A potential threat to Australia's insect biodiversity comes from the European bumble bee. Their so-called buzz pollination can double yields for greenhouse grown produce, and although found in Tasmania, applications to import them to the mainland have been rejected by the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service.
TIM HEARD: European bumble bees have been introduced into other parts of the world and in many of those countries they've become invasive pest insects. They've left the enclosures in which they were introduced and formed natural populations in the wild, and these populations have a lot of potential to compete negatively with our native bee fauna.
SEAN MURPHY: For now, a more immediate concern to native bee numbers is land clearing. At Coffs Harbour on the mid-north coast of NSW, Will Archer has collected about 50 native bee nests from loggers.
WILL ARCHER: If we had have left this in this log any longer, this nest probably would have died because it's so waterlogged and it's starting to get mould in it. I don't know how long this has been laying on the ground because I got it from loggers the other day. It's all crushed as well, so it must have hit the ground with a bit of a bang. I am not sure whether the queen survived in this or not, but what I'm going to do is I might get a queen egg cell out of one of my other hives and put it in here just in case so they'll breed up a new queen.
SEAN MURPHY: The 24-year-old is trying to collect enough stingless bees to harvest commercial quantities of their honey. In the wild their fragile nests are easily damaged but he's developed an artificial hive which can be harvested without affecting the bee brood.
WILL ARCHER: The features of my design, there's three sections to it. There's the two bottom sections, which is the brood and in that is all their eggs and enough honey and pollen to survive through the winter. On top there's a separate super and once they've filled up their brood and they have enough stores to survive winter, they put their excess in the top and you can just lift that off without damaging the nest structure at all and harvest that honey.
SEAN MURPHY: Will Archer's design earned him $25,000 in a national small business competition and he wants to use the money to tap into pollination and native honey markets.
WILL ARCHER: Both are native stingless bee honey. One is a more mature one - this darker one is much older and this one here is one I got out of my hives the other day. It has a bit of pollen mixed in with it - it hasn't had time to settle yet.
SEAN MURPHY: Beekeeper and honey retailer Jeff Daley believes the honey, or Sugarbag as it's known, has huge potential.
JEFF DALEY: Beautiful aroma. The aroma has got a lot to do with flavour. The nose tells us what our tastebuds like. Very sweet. With a lot of pollen in it, it should have a lot of good properties to help out the human body.
SEAN MURPHY: What sort of potential do you think it will have in the marketplace?
JEFF DALEY: I think it will have very good potential. It's a niche market of its own. It's Australia's own native bee. No-one else in the world has it, so I reckon we've got a really good product that we can get out there.
SEAN MURPHY: The problem will be coming up with enough supply as native bee hives only produce about a kilogram of honey a year, compared to an average of 75 kilograms for European honey bees. Besides a unique tangy flavour, Sugarbag may also have medicinal benefits.
TIM HEARD: There's been very few studies done on the medicinal benefits of native bee honey. However all around the world where stingless bees are kept, native peoples use that honey for medicinal purposes. So it's likely there is some medicinal use of this honey.
SEAN MURPHY: The challenge in developing commercially viable native bee honey and pollination services, according to Dr Heard, will be in developing a critical mass of hives to sustain these industries. But also in greater understanding of them.
TIM HEARD: There's lots of research opportunities with these bees. We do need to know a lot more about what crops require pollination and what bees are efficient pollinators of those crops. There's a whole industry in utilising the honey of these bees and not only the honey, the propolis. There's many different applications for these bees and there's a lot of research needed to develop those applications. We need commitment from all the interested parties, including the horticultural industries, the honey industry, universities, state and federal government research departments in order to make that research happen.
FARM FACT: AUSTRALIAN RESEARCHERS ARE CURRENTLY INVESTIGATING THE USE OF TWO NATIVE BEE SPECIES FOR BUZZ POLLINATION OF CROPS SUCH AS TOMATOES. THEY ARE THE TEDDY BEAR BEE AND THE BLUE BANDED BEE."
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http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1565902.htm