The Australian Native Bee Book: Keeping Stingless Bee Hives for Pets, Pollination and Delectable Sugarbag Honey

by Tim Heard

The Australian Native Bee Book by Tim Heard is a complete guide to keeping Australian native stingless bees. These captivating and useful insects are the subject of a new wave of beekeeping interest. Based on Tim Heard’s successful workshops, this book starts with the general biology of bees and finishes with practical details on keeping them.

The Australian Native Bee book is richly illustrated with over 400 photo, drawings and charts to aid your learning. This guide features:

Bee biology, behaviour, nesting, social life and foraging
How to build your own native bee hive
How to transfer a bee colony to a hive box and propagate hives
All about sugar bag honey, including how to extract it from hives
Managing your hive, including identifying and dealing with pests
Using stingless bees for pollination – from small gardens to commercial crops
A complete list of Australia’s stingless bee species and their details

Genres: Nonfiction

246 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2015

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent guide to keeping Australian native bees. I hope to be doing some of this kind of bee keeping in the future and no doubt will refer to this book.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book on native stingless bees covering all aspects of their biology and keeping. The detail in the text is complemented by ample photographs and diagrams. The ultimate reference on stingless bees recommended for learning about the ecology of a fascinating group of insects as weell as keepers of native bees.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent resource for everything you want to know about Australian native bees. This book has really developed my knowledge on bees. It covers the evolution of bees, the structure of hives, how bees make honey, how to keep your own bee hive and much much more. It was a fascinating read and highly recommended if you are considering your own backyard hive!

[KJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to return to the library. Excellent resource.

[Trina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant book, the everything to know about our native Bees. Such an eye opener of how many native species and vast differences between the various types of stingless bees we have in Australia, fantastic quality diagrams and photo plates with great detail to magnification An all round great species look up with laymen terms insight to a fascinatingly necessary part of our environment, etymology to understanding bees local to afar and how to bring to garden, to a bee keepers guide a great gardeners reference book to keep handy.

[Rhyl · Rating 5 out of 5]

An all round excellent resource for the learner as well as plenty of detail for the more experienced. Very easy to read and with beautiful and well chosen images to really complement the text. If you are interested in keeping your own stingless bees this is a must have.

[Chris Cousins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended. I am going to build some stingless bee hives.

Everything you want to know about these wonderful creatures is in this book.

[Anthea Cuddihy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource! Very informative and easy to follow. As a new native bee-keeper, I recommend this book to anyone wanting to know everything you need to get started successfully.