Australian Stingless Bee “farming”: as the hobby is niche, even in Australia, there isn’t much publicly available advancement in hive designs, propogation methods and care techniques for native bees. This makes the barrier for entry high, and the chances of losing a hive when inexperienced is moderately high too. More people in the hobby would hopefully bring in more discussion and experimentation, and make the hobby more accessible to others by hopefully bringing the price of hives down.
TTRPGs/Wargaming outside of the big 2 games: if its not 40k or D&D, you are unlikely to find anyone that knows of alternate systems, let alone wants to play them. Makes it a lot harder to find a group outside of a game over discord or similar
Honestly, they are extremely different, and while there are transferable skills from apis beekeeping to stingless beekeeping, it is different enough to be a separate hobby entirely.
Apis bees use a wax based honeycomb structure for brood, pollen and honey, whereas stingless bees around the world use tree or plant resins based structures for brood and different resin structures for honey/pollen, and keep them totally separated. As these structures are not as orderly as apis bee frames tend to be, it is much harder to harvest the honey from stingless bees (in Brazil where the honey pots are larger, they use a syringe system to vacuum the honey out of the pots. In Australia where the pots are much smaller, we use a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it to smash all the pots and drain the honey). It is also harder to clone hives due to these structures, as in apis bees you can just take some frames with a queen cell or two and put them in an empty hive and they will hatch into a new hive. In Australia, the most popular method is to literally rip the hive in half and hope both halves survive. You also have to monitor the temperature, because stingless bees have less bees to cool or warm up the hive, and may need help during heat waves or cold snaps to survive.
Having said this, stingless bees are great pollinators, and are totally immune to varroa mites. Their honey is totally different to apis honey due to the flavour contributed by the resin pots the bees store it in and it is extremely interesting (totally worth the extra work to get at). The hives are also much smaller in comparison to an apis hive, so combining their stingless nature into the mix you have a perfect beehive for beekeepers in more urban areas or with younger families.
If you are interested in beekeeping, but not fussed with honey or monitoring for varroa or are worried about getting yourself or people nearby stung by bees, stingless bees native to your region might be be best thing - if maintained, their hives can live longer than we do, and will make you and everyone within half a km of you have great gardens as they go around pollinating everything nearby. Once you have the first hive, you can easily make a second one (the Australian hive design is the OATH and designs for this and upgrades to the standard can be found easily online) and start making your one hive into a ton of hives.
The outbreak we have of varroa is being contained but it looks like we may have it spreading to the larger apis community of Australia now as it has been found many kms away from the initial outbreak. Unfortunately, the baits used are just sugar syrup laced with insecticide, so this is currently wiping out stingless bees alongside the varroa infected apis hives. Many stingless beekeepers have started moving their hives out of the containment zone and giving them to friends and family until the baiting process is complete.
If you have any social bees in your area, consider getting yourself a hive! As said its a bit more work than apis bees, but that’s because the community for non-apis beekeeping is much smaller. The more people in the community, the more knowledge and the more native beekeeping will advance!
I’m from Europe, so there are only apes, and I don’t want to keep theses, as the area aound me is heavilly overbeed. However, I consider keeping/supporting nonsocial bees (or bumblebees), but I haven’t started yet.
If you’re looking for a TTRPG and not wanting to worry about the lfg hassle, check out Ironsworn! Grimdark low fantasy, playable in solo or co-op. Just takes some getting used to, and reading lots of player advice, but playing solo become very easy if you already have that rpg brain leading the way. Also free materials online, but I bought the core rules and the “dungeon” expansion hardcopies for about $50 (USD).
I’ve since converted a couple of things and am solo playing to beef up the plot of a book I’m writing in a world I’ve been working on for about 5 years. Makes that process engaging for the gamer side of me!
I’ll have a look into this! I’ve been playing solo OPR to get the wargaming itch, but I haven’t found anything for TTRPGs so Ironsworn might fill that hole nicely.
Honestly I can’t narrow it down to less than 2:
Australian Stingless Bee “farming”: as the hobby is niche, even in Australia, there isn’t much publicly available advancement in hive designs, propogation methods and care techniques for native bees. This makes the barrier for entry high, and the chances of losing a hive when inexperienced is moderately high too. More people in the hobby would hopefully bring in more discussion and experimentation, and make the hobby more accessible to others by hopefully bringing the price of hives down.
TTRPGs/Wargaming outside of the big 2 games: if its not 40k or D&D, you are unlikely to find anyone that knows of alternate systems, let alone wants to play them. Makes it a lot harder to find a group outside of a game over discord or similar
Can you elaborate how much is stingless-bee-keeping different from apis-mellifera-beekeeping?
Honestly, they are extremely different, and while there are transferable skills from apis beekeeping to stingless beekeeping, it is different enough to be a separate hobby entirely.
Apis bees use a wax based honeycomb structure for brood, pollen and honey, whereas stingless bees around the world use tree or plant resins based structures for brood and different resin structures for honey/pollen, and keep them totally separated. As these structures are not as orderly as apis bee frames tend to be, it is much harder to harvest the honey from stingless bees (in Brazil where the honey pots are larger, they use a syringe system to vacuum the honey out of the pots. In Australia where the pots are much smaller, we use a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it to smash all the pots and drain the honey). It is also harder to clone hives due to these structures, as in apis bees you can just take some frames with a queen cell or two and put them in an empty hive and they will hatch into a new hive. In Australia, the most popular method is to literally rip the hive in half and hope both halves survive. You also have to monitor the temperature, because stingless bees have less bees to cool or warm up the hive, and may need help during heat waves or cold snaps to survive.
Having said this, stingless bees are great pollinators, and are totally immune to varroa mites. Their honey is totally different to apis honey due to the flavour contributed by the resin pots the bees store it in and it is extremely interesting (totally worth the extra work to get at). The hives are also much smaller in comparison to an apis hive, so combining their stingless nature into the mix you have a perfect beehive for beekeepers in more urban areas or with younger families.
If you are interested in beekeeping, but not fussed with honey or monitoring for varroa or are worried about getting yourself or people nearby stung by bees, stingless bees native to your region might be be best thing - if maintained, their hives can live longer than we do, and will make you and everyone within half a km of you have great gardens as they go around pollinating everything nearby. Once you have the first hive, you can easily make a second one (the Australian hive design is the OATH and designs for this and upgrades to the standard can be found easily online) and start making your one hive into a ton of hives.
TIL varroas have been found in Australia, I’m sorry for that.
And thank you for the explanation.
The outbreak we have of varroa is being contained but it looks like we may have it spreading to the larger apis community of Australia now as it has been found many kms away from the initial outbreak. Unfortunately, the baits used are just sugar syrup laced with insecticide, so this is currently wiping out stingless bees alongside the varroa infected apis hives. Many stingless beekeepers have started moving their hives out of the containment zone and giving them to friends and family until the baiting process is complete.
If you have any social bees in your area, consider getting yourself a hive! As said its a bit more work than apis bees, but that’s because the community for non-apis beekeeping is much smaller. The more people in the community, the more knowledge and the more native beekeeping will advance!
I’m from Europe, so there are only apes, and I don’t want to keep theses, as the area aound me is heavilly overbeed. However, I consider keeping/supporting nonsocial bees (or bumblebees), but I haven’t started yet.
If you’re looking for a TTRPG and not wanting to worry about the lfg hassle, check out Ironsworn! Grimdark low fantasy, playable in solo or co-op. Just takes some getting used to, and reading lots of player advice, but playing solo become very easy if you already have that rpg brain leading the way. Also free materials online, but I bought the core rules and the “dungeon” expansion hardcopies for about $50 (USD).
I’ve since converted a couple of things and am solo playing to beef up the plot of a book I’m writing in a world I’ve been working on for about 5 years. Makes that process engaging for the gamer side of me!
Can’t help you with the bees, I’m afraid…
I’ll have a look into this! I’ve been playing solo OPR to get the wargaming itch, but I haven’t found anything for TTRPGs so Ironsworn might fill that hole nicely.
It did just that for me, gets those creative juices flowing!