Australia and New Zealand
Sugarbag — Aboriginal harvesting of native stingless bees, with the knowledge of how to find a nest as much the tradition as the taking of it — alongside an entirely introduced Apis sector.
5 practices · region
- Sugarbag huntingStingless-bee keeping · Local living practiceAboriginal harvesting of native stingless bee nests across northern and eastern Australia. Finding the nest is the tradition as much as taking it, and the knowledge is embedded in story, song and seasonal indicators rather than held separately from them.
- MeliponicultureStingless-bee keeping · RevivedKeeping stingless bees for honey, wax-resin and pollination, in log sections, clay pots or purpose-built boxes. Practised independently across the Neotropics, Australia, Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, and constrained everywhere by the same biological limit.
- Australian native bee keepingStingless-bee keeping · Widespread living practiceKeeping Tetragonula and Austroplebeia in purpose-built boxes across eastern and northern Australia. A modern hobbyist and pollination sector, distinct from — and sometimes in tension with — the Aboriginal sugarbag tradition it sits alongside.
- Commercial pollinationBeekeeping tradition · Widespread living practiceRenting colonies to growers for the duration of a bloom, under contract, at a price per hive. For many large operations it is now the main revenue line and honey is the by-product.
- Queen rearing and the bee tradeBeekeeping tradition · Widespread living practiceProducing queens and bees as products in their own right — grafted queens, packages in the post, nucleus colonies — which is what lets an industry replace its losses on a schedule.