Native Stingless Bees

These bees naturally nest in hollow trees but have found homes in all sorts of places across suburbia, such as water meter pits, telephone cable pits, irrigation system pits, and even upturned pots.

Because of their nesting behaviour, we are able to keep these bees in hives. They are only 1/25 the size of a honey bee so don’t need as much space and the hives are much smaller than normal honey bees.

Their nests are very different from honey bees. They build the structures from tree resins and wax they produce from their abdomens. They collect honey and pollen and store these in small pots that look like grapes. Tetragonula Carbonaria in particular has a beautiful spiral shaped brood.

The most widely kept species of these bees are Tetragonula Carbonaria, Tetragonula Hockingsi, and Australis Austroplebeia. These cover large areas of South East Qld.

People keep bees in all sorts of different shaped hives made of all sorts of different materials. But we use the closest thing to “industry standard” which is an OATH shaped hive (Original Australian Trigona Hive) and is made from 25mm Hoop Pine, which has proven insulation properties and is a local, sustainable and affordable material. This type of hive will accommodate up to 10 000 bees in a strong nest.

There are 3 levels on the standard OATH – the bottom 2 being for the brood (main nest) and the top level as a honey box.

Strong hives can be split each year to create two new hives. This process is fairly easy to do but there are a few things to look out for so we encourage owners to do some research first and watch some YouTube videos or engage someone to do the split for you.