Ellen Phiddian
Cosmos science journalist
The beloved honeybee has become something of a symbol of environmental protection. The threat of declining populations in the 2000s drew out amateur beekeepers and blooming backyards, hoping to keep the bees healthy.
But honeybees are not the only form of bee. And scrupulous efforts to save them in the northern hemisphere may not be translating to the Antipodes.
“The reality is that honeybees are the last bee species on the planet that’s going to go extinct,” says Dr Kit Prendergast, a native bee ecologist at the University of Southern Queensland and Curtin University.
“And in Australia, they are livestock or feral. They’re not part of our indigenous biodiversity.”
Australia boasts more than 1,600 described species of native bee, with another 500 known about but not scientifically named. These bees are crucial parts of the native ecosystem, providing pollination for a range of very selective plants.
Are they in trouble? When Professor Graham Pyke, an ecologist at Macquarie University, went looking for evidence, he found there had been “hardly any emphasis down under” on native bee populations in research.
“One obvious possible conclusion is there’s no reason for concern down under, because the pollination crisis has somehow missed us. We don’t need to be worried,” says Pyke.
“But if you think about the factors involved, we realise that the same factors that have been producing the crisis in other parts of the world are also in operation here in Australia.
“Those factors include things like agriculture, which has become more extensive. We’ve ploughed up more ground and converted it into agricultural activities, also it’s more intensive. We’ve gone from having scattered crops to monocultures and intensive use of pesticides and so on. So that has led in Australia, and elsewhere, to losses in native vegetation.”
It’s not that native bees are doing okay, suggests Pyke. It’s that we don’t know enough about them to protect them.
Why is there a lack of concern? “It’s a lack of awareness, rather than absence of the problem,” says Pyke.
Prendergast – who now has several native bee tattoos – says she didn’t know that bees other than honeybees or bumblebees existed until her 20s.
“I just had no idea. You can’t protect or care about what you don’t know,” she says.
Prendergast says there is a “crisis of misinformation” in native bee research.
“There’s a crisis that’s not even happening – this idea that honeybees about to go extinct,” she says.
“In some situations, [honeybees] can actually out compete our native bees and harm them.”
Meanwhile, native bees remain largely unknown – even to bee and plant researchers.
“Every time I do a biodiversity survey of native bees, I’ll find hundreds of undescribed species,” says Prendergast.
“There’s just so much work to be done and no funding going into it.”
Even fellow ecologists can have blind spots.
“There’s this disconnect between conserving wildflowers and their pollinators,” says Prendergast.
“There’ll be so much on conservation wildflowers, looking at cues that promote seed germination and genetic connectivity between the populations based on like microsatellite studies, but they actually don’t know what the pollinators are.”
What’s more, tried-and-true methods of supporting bees in Europe and North America don’t necessarily translate to Australia. People with the best of intentions may not be helping.
“You always hear, ‘to save pollinators, plant a garden with lots of diverse flowers and things like lavender and roses’, and that’s just not the case,” says Prendergast.
“My research actually found a significant negative relationship between flower diversity and gardens and native bees, because the Australian bees are specialised. They really need large patches of specific native flowers.
“These sorts of guidelines that are developed in the Northern Hemisphere don’t apply here.”
This is not an unfamiliar adage in agriculture: what works brilliantly overseas doesn’t necessarily work in Australia.
The lack of knowledge makes it much harder to protect species when they might be under threat. Only 4 native bees have “any sort of legislation” attached to them, says Prendergast. This makes consulting, ahead of land clearing for development or mining, a galling task.
“I’ve done surveys where there’s over 30 species around the impact area, and they’re like, ‘well, that one species that happens to be listed isn’t there’,” says Prendergast.
“If we found 30 species of birds in a small area that was going to be cleared, they’d have to do something about it. But they don’t have to when it comes to native bees.”
What would help our native pollinators?
“We need, of course, as always, more research,” says Pyke.
This includes taxonomical research, monitoring research (citizen science projects can help here), and experimental studies to see how bee populations are affected by change.
“We also need changes in policy. For example, agriculture needs to take on board requirements of pollinators and pollination,” says Pyke.
“Part of it would be more engagement between people that are actually on the ground, looking at the pollinators and what they need, and then working with land care groups and local councils,” says Prendergast.
“Urban greening is a big thing, restoration is a big thing, but just planting plants won’t necessarily help pollinators. And it won’t help the plants if the pollinators aren’t there.”
Prendergast says that while citizen science can help, it needs to be “done in the right way.”
“It would be more things like making sure that gardens are designed with the right flowers, working to reduce urban bushland clearing, having investment into proper targeted pollinating, monitoring and taxonomy.”
And if you yourself have decided that your new years resolution is to help the native bees?
“Look for groups of people who are like-minded and carrying out activities,” advises Pyke.
