Latest news with #KitPrendergast
ABC News
19-05-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Store-bought bee hotels doing more harm than good for native species
When Marc Newman's wife brought home a new bee hotel from a local hardware store, he knew it was going to attract trouble. The 86-year-old had spent almost 20 years building the wooden structures that help support native bee numbers across Queensland's Darling Downs and knew the particular specifications they required. The Toowoomba local said, like many cheap imports, the store-bought bee hotel fell short. He had to drill larger holes to protect native bees from predators like wasps and also painted or replaced some of the timber he suspected had been treated with toxic chemicals. Mr Newman said it was disappointing that unsuitable pre-made hotels were still being sold. "What happens is the bees don't use those hotels and people get disillusioned," he said. "It's on the internet all the time, people have bought the hotel and it's not the right design." As more Australians become aware of the need to protect native bee species, many are buying cheap pre-made hotels to set up in their backyard. University of Southern Queensland postdoctoral researcher Kit Prendergast said these hotels had many flaws, meaning they were either not suitable for native bees, or could cause them harm. "Some are metal cans with things stuck into them and they can get very hot," she said. "Other are just containers stuffed with twigs, leaves, pine cones and any sort of natural woody material, which the bees won't use." Dr Prendergast said bee hotels needed to be carefully designed to attract native bees. "You want holes that are less than 10 millimetres in diameter and longer than 10 centimetres, [without] splinters," she said. "You want untreated materials, so ones that haven't been imported from overseas and treated with chemicals." According to the Australian Native Bee Association (ANBA), more needed to be done to help protect the estimated 1,700 native bee species. ANBA chair Megan Halcroft said there was currently no national monitoring scheme for native bees. "We don't know the health status of our native populations of insects," Dr Halcroft said. "We've done no research and we've got no baseline data to compare with. "If you don't know what you've started with, you can't know if you've lost numbers or if you've increased numbers." Dr Halcroft said Australia was behind other first world countries when it came to monitoring. "It's only in the last few years that there has been an increase in awareness [of natives] within the broader community, councils, and a little bit in government," she said. Mr Newman said the community's interest in native bees had grown since he first became involved in 2006. He now passes on his knowledge to others, often posting his bee hotel specifications online. "I started off doing all the wrong things and ended up hopefully doing it right," he said. Dr Halcroft said people interested in protecting native species should stay away from common European honey bees. "Honey bees are not native to Australia at all, they are very competitive," she said. "There's a lot of competition out there and we don't need more invasive species." Only 11 species of native Australian bees make honey. Native bees play a critical role in the environment by pollinating native plants, many of which cannot be pollinated by introduced bees.
The Guardian
19-05-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Scientists recommend limits on urban beekeeping to protect Australia's native bees from honeybees
Scientists have recommended limits on urban beekeeping after a peer-reviewed study found introduced honeybees could be harming Australian native bees and risked driving them to extinction. The Australian research, published in Frontiers in Bee Science, found native bees living in areas with high densities of introduced honeybees had fewer female offspring and a higher death rate in their first year of life. Dr Kit Prendergast, the lead author of the study, said honeybees posed a threat to the health and size of native bee populations – and there was a risk population declines could eventually lead to local extinctions. 'By boosting honeybee numbers, you can be harming native bees,' said Prendergast, a native bee scientist and conservationist at the University of Southern Queensland. More than 1,700 species of native bees have been identified in Australia, and they play an important role in pollinating native trees and wildflowers. Unlike the common domestic honeybee, which was introduced to Australia from Europe about 200 years ago for honey and crop pollination, most Australian native bee species aren't yellow and black and don't live in hives. Native bees ranged from some of the smallest bees in the world to 'really big, bombastic ones' like the Dawson's burrowing bee, a ground-nesting bee with a 4.5cm wingspan, Prendergast said. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter Over two spring-summer seasons, Prendergast and a team of researchers studied native bees living in specially designed bee hotels – wooden boxes designed for native bees to rest and breed in – across 14 sites in Perth, investigating whether proximity to European honeybees impacted various signs of health in native populations. Both introduced and native bees needed nectar and pollen to survive and reproduce, but when resources were scarce – particularly during drought or after bushfires – introduced bees dominated, as they could travel further and forage on a greater variety of plants. As a precautionary step, the authors recommended limits on urban beekeeping, and steps to prevent and control swarming – where the queen takes half the colony to find a new place to live – and feral hives, especially in state and national parks. Protecting and increasing flowering trees like eucalyptus, myrtles and bottlebrushes and wildflowers could help support native bee populations, the authors said. Dr Katja Hogendoorn, an expert in native and introduced bees at the University of Adelaide who was not involved in the study, said while European bees played an important role in crop pollination, their use for honey production should be limited to protect native species. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion She said the findings were consistent with other research showing high densities of honeybees reduced available nectar and pollen resources for native populations, and larger bees in particular struggled to find enough food to fly. Compared to other countries, Australia had 'an enormous number of feral hives' – or honeybee colonies in the wild – she said, but as they were often high up in eucalyptus tree hollows, it made removing them extremely difficult and labour intensive. Hogendoorn said protecting and planting flowering native plants was critical, given bees suffered from the effects of habitat loss, climate change and competition from honeybees. Hogendoorn said about a third of Australia's bee species were yet to be described. She was part of a team that described 71 new native species of resin pot bees, which are unique to Australia and build nests out of resin. It was important to understand what species there were, where they lived and whether they were endangered, she said. 'We still have a lot to discover,' she said. 'We may be losing species that we don't even know about yet.'
West Australian
15-05-2025
- Science
- West Australian
Gidgegannup Small Farm Field Day: Bee scientist Kit Prendergast among list of high-calibre speakers
Wild bee scientist Kit Prendergast will be among the speakers at this year's Gidgegannup Small Farm Field Day, with plans to talk about her research on supporting native bees. When you begin to grow a garden, an amazing thing happens. As with any passion — stamps, cars, vintage war paraphernalia — our brains become so attuned to the objects of our fascination that we suddenly start seeing them everywhere. You develop an obsession with old VWs and suddenly the roads are filled with them. You get into native Australian banksias and all at once they line the streets. Of course, they were there all along, hiding right under your nose, waiting for you to take an interest. In the garden, this happens most often with the plants we learn to love and identify. But there is another world existing amongst the things we grow that is equally invisible until we decide to take an interest: the world of the native bees that visit our plants. Kit Prendergast — wild bee ecologist, author, and science communicator — knows this better than most. She has spent years studying the little-known native bees of WA, advocating for their protection and for continued research into their lives, behaviours and the habitats that support them. In the past few years, Kit's work has led to the discovery of a native bee species that had not previously been identified (she named it Leioproctus Zephyr, in honour of her dog Zephyr). But there are countless other native bee species flitting and flying among us that are yet to be identified, with some estimates suggesting less than half of WA's native bees are known to researchers. Without proper research and funding, we do not know whether these species are endangered, where they live, what they eat or what vital roles they may play in our ecosystem. Kit, 'The Bee Babette', speaks for the bees and, closer to home, is now growing her own garden to support them. 'We only moved in to our place in the Perth Hills at the start of December and what I loved about it — and why I chose it — was that it's got beautiful open garden spaces and is pretty much on a bush block,' Kit tells me from her sunny backyard. Kit, her partner and baby daughter have moved into a pre-established garden that she is slowly but surely making her mark on. 'There's a lot of exotics in this garden, which isn't my preference,' she explains, 'because native bees definitely prefer native flowers.' Ms Prendergast will be among the list of high-calibre speakers at this year's Gidgegannup Small Farm Field Day, with plans to discuss the best way to support native bees in a home garden environment — with bee hotels, appropriate flora and all the information one might need on native bees. 'The Field Day ties in with World Bee Day, which is May 20,' she said. 'I'll be shining a light on the unsung heroes of Aussie bee biodiversity, our native bees. 'I'll be celebrating their diversity, evolution, relationships with plants, and how we can all help conserve this precious component of biodiversity to ensure thriving gardens, farms and ecosystems. 'This includes through floral selection, well-designed bee hotels and other nesting substrates, and individual actions that lead to global benefits.' Some native bees feed from only one specific plant, meaning many Perth gardens are essentially food deserts for these unique insects. While the (non-native) honeybee has long claimed the spotlight, Kit is bringing attention to the many other bees that deserve our care and protection — and growing them a new home too. The Gidgegannup Small Farm Field Day is on May 25. To read the official program, pick up a copy of the May 15 edition of Countryman.
