-- A bold black bee with a brassy yellow waistcoat, legs laden with pollen, disappears into a hole in a tree limb.

-- Two metallic green bees, as glossy as highly-polished cars, perform an intricate mating dance above the wildflowers.

-- Ten fat, furry bees, with bright blue stripes across their jet-black tails, jostle for positions on a dead stem at dusk.

-- Hundreds of tiny, black, stingless bees fill dainty honey pots with delicious honey inside a hollow tree.

These are our fascinating and little known native bees!

To find out much more about our Australian native bees, visit the Aussie Bee website: http://www.aussiebee.com.au

Most Australians are only familiar with the golden-brown, commercial honeybee (Apis mellifera). However, few know that this honeybee is not an Australian native bee. It was brought into Australia from Europe in about 1822 to provide honey for the early pioneers.

In Tasmania we now also have another introduced bee. The 15 mm gold and black bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) was brought accidentally into Tasmania from New Zealand in 1992 and has now spread all over Tasmania.

But our very-own Australian native bees are the hidden treasures of your garden.

Throughout Australia we have hundreds of species of native bees which live solitary lives.

These bees nest in tiny holes in the ground or in wood, and each nest is built by just one female bee. While many nests may be found close together in an arrangement like a village, only one female bee lays eggs in each nest.

There are no queens or workers in solitary bee species. Blue banded bees, teddy bear bees and leafcutter bees are examples of Australian solitary bees.

All solitary native bees are capable of stinging though most are too small to deliver an effective sting. None of our solitary native bees are aggressive and they will normally only sting as a last resort if they are grasped or trodden upon.

See: photos of some common types of native bees.

The best known of our Australian native bees are the social stingless bees - our own Aussie honeybees (genera Trigona and Austroplebeia). These are tiny black bees, just 3-4 mm long, which live in colonies of up to thousands of bees inside hollow trees or other cavities.

Aborigines have prized the tangy honey of these bees for centuries and call the honey "sugarbag".

These bees have a queen, workers and drones just like commercial honeybees. However, they build nests which are dark and resinous, and instead of using a honeycomb, these bees store their honey in little pots which resemble a bunch of grapes.

To find out more, visit our Australian Stingless Bee Lens

Plant nectar-rich flowering plants to support your local native bee species.
Popular flowers include Eucalyptus (gum blossom), Callistemon (bottlebrush), Grevillea (spider flower), Melaleuca (honey myrtle), Leptospermum (tea tree), Westringia (rosemary), Lavendula (lavender), Xanthorrhoea (grass tree) and many varieties of daisies.

Protect the nesting sites of native bees.
Typical nesting sites for native bees include:
-- burrows in the ground
-- burrows in soft sandstone, mortar or mud bricks
-- hollow pithy twigs (including tree fern fronds and even dead canes of lantana!)
-- old beetle holes in trees or logs
-- soft timbers such as dead mango boughs and grass tree flower spikes
-- hollows inside large trees
Please look for nesting native bees if clearing away or "cleaning up" materials like these!

Watch out for nests of social stingless bees inside fallen hollow trees.
Many nests are burnt in heaps of timber during land clearing. Read Aussie Bee's guide to rescuing a nest of stingless bees.

And of course, avoid the use of insecticides. These chemicals will kill your native bees along with the pests!