Australian Native Bees | News & Info

Redcliffe Garden Centre with Gregs Native Bees

Top photo: Ross and Greg

Greg Coonan of Greg’s Native Bees held an info session at the Redcliffe Garden Centre. It’s my local and favourite nursery owned and run by Ross and his wife Gena, so I couldn’t resist dropping in.

There were two free sessions during the day, both attracting around thirty keen listeners each with plenty of excellent information covering species, pests, colony positioning with regard to sun and roofs, forager behaviour with pollen and resin, Queen behaviour and lifecycles, box design, and the basics of getting in to your first native bee colony.

There were a couple of display hives with viewing windows that provided excellent opportunities for everyone to see the inner structures of newly established colonies. One had some nice examples of open honey pots and another was a recent rescue colony with a small exposed brood. The Queens were spotted a few times but didn’t make an appearance for the camera.

The nursery has a couple of colonies on display including one of Greg’s standard boxes and also a large log colony. These are just display colonies though Greg does sell boxes and logs full with native stingless bees. See contact details and bottom of this page.

Greg recently released his book “Keeping Australian Native Bees” and had them on sale , selling quite a few. Plenty of people left with their hands full of plants and his book. A fantastic day was had by all and looked like quite a few new native bee enthusiasts were created.

Keeping Australian Native Stingless Bees – by Greg Coonan

Greg has written a fantastic 63 page book about Native Stingless Bees which is recommended reading for those getting started in the hobby. This covers the basics of first getting in to bees, hive propagation methods through to his experiences with log hives and rescues. Greg is a great believer in leaving bee colonies in natural logs as the logs make excellent secure homes for the bees and look great in the garden and this is covered in the book. There’s quite a few photos in the book supplied by the excellent photographer Geoffrey Dutton.

Contact:

Located at Brighton Qld/Aus

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Gregsnativebees

Book Link: https://www.northernbeebooks.co.uk/products/keeping-australian-stingless-bees-by-greg-coonan/

Related article: https://www.nativebeehives.com/gregs-native-bees/

Hivecraft - Australian Native Bee Supplies

Native bee boxes available at www.hivecraft.com.au

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