Out of all the thousands of native species of bees in Australia, only about two-thirds have even been named.
So it may be surprising that finding work to study and catalogue native bees is a tough slog for those in the industry.
Native bee expert James Dorey, an adjunct lecturer at Flinders University, is about to move overseas, despite wanting to stay in Australia to study native bees.
Knowledge gap
Dr Dorey said Australia was decades, or even “centuries behind” the United States when it came to native bee knowledge.
“We really don’t know much about our bee fauna,” he said.
“Even for the species we do have a name for, we probably know next to nothing about them.”
After completing a post-doctorate in America, Dr Dorey had wanted to stay in Australia to research which native bee species were threatened with extinction and why.
He said he wanted to better understand what pollination resilience Australia would have, especially in light of the arrival of varroa mite.
But after seven post-doctoral fellowship applications, he said he wouldn’t be able to complete the research so he would soon be returning to America instead.
“I’ve tried very hard to do work here … but there is more research funding in the US for native bees,” he said.
Working for free
But not everyone can leave Australia to follow such opportunities.
Native bee ecologist and taxonomist Kit Prendergast has been attempting to find funding, or a job to help continue her work.
Unable to move internationally, she is instead getting by hosting workshops, and completing work in other areas.
To stay in the industry Dr Prendergast, who is based in Queensland, has often had to work for free, and supplement grants with her own savings.
“I do a lot for free … but you also have to live,” she said.
“That’s a problem when you are researching something you love, people expect you to do it for free.”
Dr Prendergast said she had no desire to leave the industry, but her options were limited.
Despite months of effort attempting to partner with councils, universities, and other groups to continue her research, there have been no takers.
“When you hear how much is being invested into honey bees, it is depressing,” she said.
“Bees are endemic to Australia and they are threatened, if you lose them they are going to be gone.”
Research too focused on pollination
University of Adelaide School of Agriculture and Wine senior researcher Katja Hogendoorn said losing native bee researchers to other industries or countries wasn’t new.
Dr Hogendoorn, who is a native bee specialist, said she had worked in crop pollination for the past 20 years out of necessity.
“Now I am moving back into conservation because we need it,” she said.
“There are no paid bee taxonomists in Australia … it is really worrying.”
Dr Hogendoorn said Australians needed to start looking past pollination when it came to bees.
“The flavour of research is all crop pollination,” she said.
“Australian native bees are on the whole are not important pollinators of our crops because they didn’t evolve with those crops, and if we want to know about those native bees, we shouldn’t be focusing on pollination.
“When it comes to protecting a bandicoot, nobody asks what kind of important things this bandicoot does, it is just a native animal that is struggling and needs our support.”
Dr Hogendoorn said the government needed to focus more funding on ecology and conservation research.
“We can’t rely on volunteers and community groups and citizen scientists to start doing things when we don’t even know what species we have,” she said.
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