Back to Peter Metcalfe's Home Page native bees and honey bees and native plants Native bees are not often seen in the bush these days because the larger and more socially organised European bees have become common enough to compete with and displace the more primitive native bees. There are about 3,000 species of native bees, most are solitary but some form colonies.
Native bees are much smaller than the European honey bee.
They look rather like a bush fly in size and colour. They do not have a sting like the honey bee. Their colonies are quite small compared to the hive of the honey bee, containing just hundreds of individuals rather than the thousands found in a honey bee hive. Some species of native bees only visit one species of plant. The small honey combs produced by the little stingless native bees were an important source of sugar for the aborigines.