PSN Monthly Gathering: What Native Bees Eat

Native Bees Nutrition Research

Dr. Alexander Austin, Environmental Programs Officer, Ku-ring-gai Council will talk about the fascinating topic of native bee nutrition.  

Nutrition is one of the cornerstones of the biological world. The acquisition and utilisation of nutrients influences every action of every organism on the planet and bees are no exception.

Bee diversity is, unfortunately, in decline worldwide with one of the drivers of this thought to be the degradation of their nutritional landscape. Despite the link between nutrition and bee declines we know surprisingly little about their nutritional needs, with the limited knowledge we do have coming almost solely from the European honeybee.

The subject of the study are nutritional decisions made by larvae of the solitary cavity-nesting mason bee Osmia bicornis, a mass-provisioning species, whereby a female provides all the nutrition to her offspring in advance. One might expect offspring to have no ability to manage the nutrients they consume, after all they only have what they are given.  

Our study shows this not to be the case and not only shows some interesting deviation from the previously accepted norm for bee nutrition but also demonstrates that the nutritional requirements of bees may be as diverse as their ecologies; a concept that has important ramifications for bee conservation.

Given we're back in lockdown, we'll be doing this via Zoom.

Joining the Zoom Meeting:

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To dial in by phone call (audio only): +61 2 8015 6011 Australia