Australian stingless bee

How to recognise it

Very small, around 4 mm, black with pale hairs on the thorax and translucent wings held over the body. It is easily mistaken for a small fly, and the nest entrance — a small hole surrounded by a smear of dark resin — is often the first sign.

• Tiny and black, around 4 mm — far smaller than a honey bee.
• No functional sting; defence is biting and swarming around the face and hair.
• The brood comb is built as a rising spiral, which is diagnostic for this species and its close relatives.
• Nests in hollow trees, wall cavities and purpose-made boxes in eastern Australia.

Body length 3.5–5 mm (typically 4 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Eusocial, colony survives the winter

Overlapping generations, division of labour, and a colony that persists through winter as a cluster. Honey bees, and the reason they store honey at all.

Colony size at peak

3,000–12,000 individuals

Colony lifespan

Many years; colonies in hollow trees may persist for decades.

Winter

No true winter in its subtropical range. Colonies become inactive below about 18 °C, which is what limits its distribution southward rather than any cold-hardiness threshold.

Castes

Queen, Workers, Males

Nesting

Resin-lined cavities; Existing cavities and tubes

Nests in tree hollows, wall cavities and purpose-built boxes, constructing an advancing spiral brood comb of cerumen — a mixture of wax and plant resin — with honey and pollen stored in separate clusters of egg-shaped pots. The entrance is defended by guards and sealed with sticky resin against ants and small hive beetles.

Carries pollen

Corbicula (pollen basket) on the hind leg

On the wing

September to May

Largely inactive below about 18 °C, so activity contracts sharply in the southern winter.

Lifecycle

1. 1Colony reproductionNew colonies are founded slowly: workers provision a chosen cavity over weeks before a virgin queen relocates to it. The parent colony survives, so this is budding rather than swarming.
2. 2Fighting swarmsNeighbouring colonies sometimes contest a nest site in mass aerial battles lasting days, with thousands of dead bees beneath. It is a startling thing to witness and entirely normal.
3. 3HarvestHoney pots are opened individually, allowing harvest without destroying the nest — though yields are small.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Subtropical and tropical eastern Australia — forest, woodland, farmland and increasingly suburban gardens.

Distribution

Coastal and near-coastal Queensland and New South Wales, roughly from Sydney north to Cape York.

Behaviour

Forages over a short range, generally a few hundred metres, and on small flowers a honey bee would find uneconomic. It also collects resin heavily for nest construction and defence, which is why the entrance is often visibly sticky.

Pollination role

Commercially used for macadamia pollination and effective on a range of native plants and crops. It buzz-pollinates poorly compared with some native bees, but its short range and small size suit it to small-flowered species and to enclosed environments.

High within its short foraging range, and one of very few stingless bees managed commercially as a crop pollinator.

What it forages on

A generalist on Australian native flora, particularly myrtles and small-flowered eucalypts, and on macadamia in orchards.

Honey

Stores small quantities, occasionally harvested

Around one kilogram a year from a strong colony, against twenty to sixty from a honey bee hive. Sugarbag honey is thin, tart and distinctly resinous from the pot material, and it is priced accordingly — often ten times honey bee honey by weight.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

Harvested as sugarbag by Aboriginal Australians for many thousands of years, with the nests located by following bees and the honey used as food and medicine. Modern hobby meliponiculture is a recent and rapidly growing practice, and the bees are increasingly kept in suburban gardens precisely because they cannot sting.

Management

Kept in purpose-built boxes that allow colonies to be split — carefully, and no more than every year or two, since colonies rebuild slowly. Overharvesting honey is the commonest beginner mistake, because the colony has far less margin than a honey bee one.

Conservation

Not currently threatened, though it depends on hollow-bearing trees that are being lost to clearing and to firewood collection. The growth of hobby keeping is largely positive and carries a risk of moving colonies and their parasites outside their natural range.