A stingless bee hive design for a broader climate range

The increased interest in pollination services provided by Australian stingless bees (Heard, 2001) and increased interest from crop is creating the need for improved maintenance of stingless bee colonies in areas that are beyond the bees' natural, geographic distribution, which is along the northern coast of Australia and down the eastern coast to Bega (lat. 37ºS). It is, therefore, important that stingless bee hive designs keep improving to provide better protection against adverse climatic conditions, thus enhancing the chances of colony survival in areas with temperate climates. Many natural colonies of Trigona carbonaria and Austroplebeia australis are found in temperate regions and are able to survive in these regions, because they nest in logs that offer good insulation against extremes of temperature. The hive designs currently in use are, however, better suited to tropical and subtropical areas and may not provide sufficient insulation for the periods of extreme hot and cold experienced in temperate regions. Here, a new design, the Temperate Climate (TC) hive, emulating successful, natural, stingless bee nesting sites found in temperate regions was compared with the Original Australian Trigona Hive (OATH) that is commonly used in tropical and subtropical areas of Australia.