Bees

We got some new pets today, about 5000 of them.

These are native stingless bees, Tetragonula carbonaria, also known as Sugarbag bees. They don't make as much honey as Honey-bees, only around a kilo a year, but it retails for something like $200 Aussie, for a kilo. It also tastes better than the usual stuff. We mainly got them to help pollinate the garden, the honey is just a bonus.

We got the hive from Tim Heard, an ex CSIRO entomologist who runs workshops on Australian native bees. He's one of Australia's most knowledgable people on native bees. We did one of his workshops a couple of years ago and also have his recently published book on the subject.

I figured I'd bore you with a video as well.

Photo shot with the S3 Pro and Tamron 18-200mm, video shot with the Canon SX130.