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23.01.2022 How to identify different native bees

21.01.2022 Reminder about today’s Facebook Live Stream presented by Dr Toby Smith for primary school-aged kids, at 10am EST. Here on our Bee Aware Kids FB page. *Today's theme will be native stingless bees, and the live stream will be filmed outside with a stingless bee hive.* Because Facebook is not for primary school-aged kids we ask that this is a parent and child activity where kids watch the live stream with their parent’s supervision, using their parents FB account. We encourage a...ll kids to think of some bee questions and post these as comments during the live stream. Toby will try and answer as many questions as possible. It would be great if Toby could get an idea of the age/school year of the child asking each question, and a first name/pseudonym/initials/identifying title for responding to you (be wise here to protect the privacy of your child/family. Your comments will be seen by all participants). So, a possible method for posting questions as comments could be something like: QueenBee, year 2, what makes a queen bee a queen bee. See you there at 10am! Toby See more

19.01.2022 Native bee live stream for kids TODAY, at 10am. This time I'll be live streaming on behalf of the City of Gold Coast Council's NaturallyGC program. This is happening on our other FB page, Bee Aware Brisbane. You can find the link here (https://www.facebook.com/events/253874642465453/). It will be a great big Q&A session where kids can ask all the things they have always wanted to know about native bees. Because Facebook is not for primary school-aged kids we ask that this is ...a parent and child activity where kids watch the live stream with their parent’s supervision, using their parents FB account. We encourage all kids to think of some bee questions and post these as comments during the live stream. Toby will try and answer as many questions as possible. It would be great if Toby could get an idea of the age/school year of the child asking each question, and a first name/pseudonym/initials/identifying title for responding to you (be wise here to protect the privacy of your child/family. Your comments will be seen by all participants). So, a possible method for posting questions as comments could be something like: BuzzBee, year 2, how do bees make honey. See you there at 10am! Toby See more

19.01.2022 Thanks everyone who listened to our live stream this morning. Thanks to our awesome neighbours, The Garden Gate (www.facebook.com/The-Garden-Gate-106647637578001), for hosting our stingless bee hives in their inspiring and plentiful garden, and for hosting the live stream today. Sorry about the technical hitch in the last couple of minutes. We're still learning about live streaming. We'll get better at it :) Also sorry to anyone who's questions I missed. As all the questions appear as I'm talking it seems it is easy to miss some. There were quite a few questions about queens and princesses this morning. So here is a picture of a young princess of the same bee species that we opened the hive of this morning, Tetragonula carbonaria. See you for another live stream next Wednesday. Toby and Veronica

17.01.2022 Hi everyone. There will NOT be a native bee live stream for kids today. We're going to let everyone, including ourselves, get used to this first week of school learning from home, and we'll be back with the live streams again from next week. Probably we will change the time from 10am to later in the day, so that kids can get their core learning out of the way first. Any suggestions for a time of day for native bee live streams. Happy home learning, and see you all next week. Toby and Veronica

16.01.2022 Sorry for the late notice everyone, but there will be no live stream for kids today. Sorry! Instead, please join me this Saturday at 10am for a live stream for kids on behalf of the City of Gold Coast Council's NaturallyGC program (see the event link here: https://www.facebook.com/events/2651547605099711/) Stay well and happy everyone. Hope to see you on the live stream on Saturday. Toby and Veronica

14.01.2022 Here is the next native bee colouring sheet. These ones are blue banded bees, the host bees of the last colouring sheet bee, the neon cuckoo bee. Blue banded bees are solitary bees. The females make nests all by themselves, digging a short tunnel into the ground. Down the tunnel they dig small brood cells about the size of marbles, and inside each one a baby grows. The mother bee does all the work by herself. While the female blue banded bees are busy digging nests and collec...ting pollen and nectar from flowers to feed their babies, the male blue banded bees are flying around patches of flowers trying to establish territories. The male bees don’t make nests and at night they roost together on small stems under shrubs, holding on with their jaws. Have a look with a torch in your garden at night, and you just might be lucky to find some blue banded bee boys roosting on a twig somewhere (usually less than about 1m from the ground). The blue banded bees in this picture are blue banded bees roosting for the night in a garden in Brisbane. Artwork by Loy Xingwen. Stay tuned for the next colouring sheet soon. See more

12.01.2022 *Event this morning* Another native bees for kids Facebook Live event this morning at 10am, today. Go here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1331501667061130/ This one is again on behalf of the City of Gold Coast Council's Naturally GC program. Come and ask all of your native bee questions. Because Facebook is not for primary school-aged kids we ask that this is a parent and child activity where kids watch the live stream with their parent’s supervision, using their parents FB... account. We encourage all kids to think of some bee questions and post these as comments during the live stream. Toby will try and answer as many questions as possible. It would be great if Toby could get an idea of the age/school year of the child asking each question, and a first name / pseudonym / initials / identifying title for responding to you (be wise here to protect the privacy of your child/family. Your comments will be seen by all participants). So, a possible method for posting questions as comments could be something like: OrchidBee, year 2, what is the world's most amazing bee. See you there at 10am! Toby See more

10.01.2022 *T-shirts* After being asked for so long, we have finally made some of our bee designs available as t-shirts on Redbubble. You can find our new Redbubble shop here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/BeesScientific/shop. For now we have designs of the Australian stingless bee Austroplebeia australis, and the world's biggest bee Megachile pluto. But stay tuned for designs of some more Australian bee species being available soon (we're just finishing drawing a couple). Loads of different styles and colours to choose from for each design. It's pretty easy. You choose your style, size and colour and then order and they send it to your door. We hope you like the designs :) Toby and Veronica (by the way, those cool looking models in the photo are not us...)

08.01.2022 *Looking out for our native bees* I answered a few questions about Australian native bees for a video for the office of the Threatened Species Commissioner this week. Just six minutes long. Check it out :) Toby

07.01.2022 The weekly Wednesday native bee Q&A live streams for kids will continue from today, but at the new time of 2pm EST. Here on the Bee Aware Kids FB page. Because Facebook is not for primary school-aged kids we ask that this is a parent and child activity where kids watch the live stream with their parent’s supervision, using their parents FB account. We encourage all kids to think of some bee questions and post these as comments during the live stream. Toby will try and answer ...as many questions as possible. It would be great if Toby could get an idea of the age/school year of the child asking each question, and a first name/pseudonym/initials/identifying title for responding to you (be wise here to protect the privacy of your child/family. Your comments will be seen by all participants). So, a possible method for posting questions as comments could be something like: "WorkerBee, year 2, what do bees eat. See you there at 2pm today! Toby. See more

04.01.2022 Looking for a simple bee-related activity to do at home? What about making some nest blocks for common solitary bees? Here is a short instruction video about making solitary bee nest blocks that I put together on behalf of City of Gold Coast Council: https://www.youtube.com/watch Nest blocks like these usually attract bees like common leaf cutter and resin bees (Megachile sp.), and common masked bees (Hylaeus sp.). Don't forget to plant some flowering plants too. There's not much point in having places to nest if the bees don't first have plenty of pollen and nectar to eat. You can find a good list of native plants for native in south east QLD here: https://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au//backyard-biodiversity-ou

04.01.2022 Looking for a native bee-related colouring activity for the kids? I will start to post a few colouring sheets (each with a photo of the actual bee to see the colours). All these drawings were done by Loy Xingwen, who did lots of great artwork for us before he left to bigger things elsewhere. First up, a neon cuckoo bee. Neon cuckoo bee mums sneak into the nests of blue banded bee mums to secretly lay their eggs. The nests of blue banded bees are tunnels in the ground. Blue ba...nded bee mums nest all by themselves (they are the 'queen' and the worker, no one helps them), so while they are out collecting pollen and nectar from flowers to feed their babies, their nests are unguarded and sneaky neon cuckoo bee mums can sneak in. A neon cuckoo bee female lays an egg in the nest and then sneaks out again. The egg then grows into a baby bee and then an adult bee in the blue banded bee mum's nest. The blue banded bee has no idea she has an imposter baby in her nest... Neon cuckoo bee mums can not raise their own babies. They need the blue banded bee hosts to be able to reproduce. If blue banded bees went extinct so too would neon cuckoo bees. Neon cuckoo bees are one of the coolest looking bees in Australia I recon :) Toby *Please download and print the drawing. Feel free to distribute it to other parents and teachers too.

04.01.2022 Ask a native bee expert all of your bee-related questions from home

03.01.2022 Reminder about the next native bee live stream for kids today, at 10am. This one is again on behalf of the City of Gold Coast Council's Naturally GC program. Go here at 10am to watch and ask all your native bee questions: https://www.facebook.com/events/2651547605099711/ Because Facebook is not for primary school-aged kids we ask that this is a parent and child activity where kids watch the live stream with their parent’s supervision, using their parents FB account. We encour...age all kids to think of some bee questions and post these as comments during the live stream. Toby will try and answer as many questions as possible. It would be great if Toby could get an idea of the age/school year of the child asking each question, and a first name/pseudonym/initials/identifying title for responding to you (be wise here to protect the privacy of your child/family. Your comments will be seen by all participants). So, a possible method for posting questions as comments could be something like: LeafCutterBee, year 2, what is the world's weirdest bee. See you there at 10am! Toby See more

01.01.2022 Native stingless bees are awesome!