Lack of research on Australia's native bees could be detrimental to their survival, experts say

While there is no shortage of eyes on European honey bees — and the impacts varroa mite , pesticides, climate change and other threats have on their populations — there is a paucity of research on native bees .That worries Australian scientists, including Kit Prendergast and Anna Carrucan , who say native bee species may be driven to extinction while no one is looking.

"There are thousands of native bee species and in some cases, we don't know their distribution, we don't know what they forage on, where they nest or their population changes.""There are lots of records of dozens of species collected 50 or 100 years ago and there is no further records of them," he said.There are more than 1,600 described bee species in Australia, and potentially several hundred varieties that are known but are yet to be scientifically described.

"There are still some in the hinterland around Sydney but the last known ones in Victoria were in the Grampians and now they are gone. That's a tragedy, really," Dr Carrucan said. Some can easily be mistaken for flies, while others resemble wasps, while some are missing the trademark stinger."It's believed bees evolved from wasps and are the vegetarian cousins to the omnivorous wasps."

"The beautiful thing about scientific names is that they're all in Latin and are the same no matter where you are in the world," Dr Prendergast said.) includes some of the smallest bees, some of which look not unlike flies or wasps.

Australian Bees Kit Prendergast Anna Carrucan University Of Southern Queensland Varroa Mite Climate Change Stingless Honey Bees Resin Bees Leaf Cutter Bees Carpenter Bees Cuckoo Bees Blue Banded Bees Teddy Bear Bees Bumblebees European Honey Bees Honey Pollination Agriculture Food Supply Farming

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