Five Ways to Help Save the Beautiful Native Bee Visitors to Your Garden or Farm

1 -- Learn all about Australian Native Bees

Read our Australian Native Bee Research Centre publications so that you can discover the native bees in your garden and learn how to encourage them. Our field guide and the Aussie Bee bulletin back issue collection provide comprehensive descriptions of Australian native bees which are simply unavailable elsewhere. You also may like to attend a native bee seminar or special event.


2 -- Plant a Bee-Friendly Garden

Study the Australian Native Bee Research Centre's list of bee-friendly plants and create a garden which will support your local native bee species.


3 -- Keep Insecticide use to the Absolute Minimum

Avoid using insecticides wherever possible and use them only when bees are unlikely to be flying (for example, in the coldest part of the day or at night).


4 -- Protect Nest Habitat

Watch out for the native bee nesting areas described in Aussie Bee and the field guide and protect these areas. For example, many native bees live in clusters of small burrows in the ground while other tiny bees live in pithy dead stems in clumps of lantana!

5 -- Contribute to Native Bee Surveys Share your observations about native bees. Information about the distribution and behaviour of many native bee species is amazingly incomplete. Your observations could be most valuable and could help fill in important gaps! Can you help? A great way to do this is to post your native bee sightings on the new BowerBird website set up by Museum Victoria. Get started by reading our Introductory Tips for BowerBird Website.

xxx