Update Day 1: photos from the 2nd Australian Native Bee Conference in Brisbane! Starting with Indigenous dancers opening the conference, talks by researchers covering Solitary Bees, Native Bee DNA Bar Coding and an interesting look at an alien looking parasitic wasp. The afternoon brought the field trip to a beautiful Lychee farm on the Sunshine Coast where we had a look at a natural Stingless Bee colony in a fallen log, Stingless Bee Hive placement experiments and a couple of Hive split demonstrations….and the compulsory epic selfie on the bus.
Below – Day 2: – Day 2 Australian Native Bee Conference. Lots of great presenters, international and local, covering a wide range of topics from bee identification, world wide bee decline, Native bees used for therapy in Hospitals, Stingless Bee Honey Standards, crop pollination of Avocados, Strawberries and Macadamia Nuts. Plenty of chat at the trade tables with Bob The Bee Man, Bugs and Beads, Wheen Bee Foundation, Sugarbag Bees and Beezotted.
Below – Day 3 brought more fascinating presentations about Native Stingless Bees, the Association General Meeting and a Native Bee Hive Exhibition.
The conference is not purely about the latest research, it’s also an opportunity for everyone to put faces to names they see on social media. It was great to catch up with people from last years conference and i met quite a few new people. I wont mention names because that would be a long list! One i will mention is Dan Smailes from Sydney Native Bees, he jumped on a plane Friday night so he could attend Day 3 on Saturday, now that’s keen, and was great to catch up even if it was only a short amount of time.
i think i had information overload after day 3 and was happy to have a more social afternoon with the hive exhibition in the courtyard and there was plenty of socialising with a few beers from the courtyard bar.
Regretfully i only took a few photos from the hive exhibition, there was a couple i missed, like David Anderson’s painted hive, Dave Gilbert’s Oriental Hive and Kerri and Peter Doyle’s engraved natural timber hives.
The hive display was followed by a demonstration by Bob The Bee Man of his honey trays and honey extraction spinner which had plenty of interest.
Another fantastic event with plenty of people helping to organise and run behind the scenes. Lachy Driver put in a massive effort running the PowerPoint slides for each presentation for three days and had his share of challenges. I think Katina Heard deserves a trophy as well!
Contact
Australian Native Bee Association http://anba.org.au
