[Pollinator] Fwd: Austn. native bees

[Peter Bernhardt]

An Australian colleague has set me straight on the revision of the genus
Trigona in Australia.  It ain't anymore Trigona (please see message
below).  Fancy using these tiny bees to pollinate strawberries.  Once
again, why didn't I think of it?

Peter
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Walker, Ken <kwalker at museum.vic.gov.au>
Date: Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 8:09 PM
Subject: RE: Austn. native bees
To: Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu>, Yvonne Hyde <
gibbsian at optusnet.com.au>
Cc: "michael.batley at gmail.com" <michael.batley at gmail.com>, Weston Peter <
Peter.Weston at rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au>, Wilson Karen <
karen.wilson at rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au>, Robyn Williams <Williams.Robyn at abc.net.au>,
Robyn Williams <gerroa100 at gmail.com>


 Hi Peter and Yvoone,



Give a taxonomist a name and he/she will change it.  The generic name
*Trigona* originally had several subgenera such as *Tetragonula*.  Several
years ago, a world-wide revision was done of the genus *Trigona *and it was
decided that the “True” *Trigona* only occurs in South America where some
species have reverted to providing protein to their larvae as animal tissue
rather than as pollen – and they have evolved the serrated mandibles to
shear the meat off carcasses as seen below.







So, all Australian stingless bees now belong to the genus *Tetragonula*.
The storage containers of the stingless bees use pots rather than hexagonal
cells.



The way to extract honey from these pots is to pierce these pots with a
piece of woods with lots of nails in it as seen in the top right corner of
the photo below.



In Australia, stingless bees are used to pollinate glasshouse crops as such
strawberries.





Finally, below is a distribution map for the genus in Australia:





Cheers



Ken
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