September 5, 2023 • 13 mins
Bumblebees have been buzzing around our state for 30 years - but where did they come from? And what do we actually know about our fuzzy friends?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I heard Dazzy. I think Tasmanians don't really understand that
bumblebees are only found in Tasmania within Australia, and lots
of Australians don't really realize that they're only found in
Tasmania as well.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's been thirty years since bumblebees were first spotted in
our state. But where did they come from and why
aren't they welcome on the mainland. I'm britt Aileen and
this is I Heart Tazzi.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I Heart Dazzy. Bumblebees have been here in Tasmania for
about thirty years, so we think they arrived in and
around the spring summer of nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
This is doctor John Finch, an entomologist at the Tasmanian
Institute of Agriculture. He has a keen interest in insects.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
They're just fascinating, you know. They're so beautiful and have
such interesting biology that I just wanted to keep studying
them and I kind of followed. My interests and my
primary interest really are are pollinators and all the kinds
of beneficial insects and trying to make agriculture more sustainable
and basically a friendlier place to be an insect.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Doctor Finch says, it's believed the bumblebees arrived in our
state on a boat from New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
And they were first discovered in the Hobart Botanic Gardens
and also in Battery Point pretty much within a day
of each other. They've been seen at both those locations.
I think what happened was probably that one or two
queen bumblebees probably came off the boat and then started
nests in multiple locations around Hobart, and it just so
happened that those particular places were filled with all the
(01:31):
plants that they need, all the flowers in particular that
they need to survive and to prosper, so lots of
European plants that they be very much adapted to.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Bumblebees have been in New Zealand for over one hundred years.
Four species were brought in for the pollination of red clover.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Places like New Zealand all the way across Europe North America.
Lots of people will actually buy in special bumblebee colonies
in boxes to put in their crops in their glasshouses
over the growing season in order to pollinate their crops.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
These days, they're primarily used for the large scale greenhouse
pollination of tomato plants, but here in Tasmania they're not
bred for agriculture. Bumblebees just exist in the wild, the
population having grown extensively from those two queen bee stowaways
back in the early nineties, with large round bodies covered
(02:23):
in soft striped, fuzzy fur. The main difference between the
bumblebee and the honeybee, which is the other type of
bee found here in Tasmania is size.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Particularly in the early spring when we see the queen
bumblebees flying around, they're really large and very black with
yellow stripes, so they're much bigger than the European honeybee.
And then later in the season we start to see
lots of bumblebee workers flying around and there a similar
size to the honeybee, but again they're very dark colored
and they kind of fly a bit more slowly and
(02:53):
they bumble, you know, they kind of fly around, kind
of looking a little bit ineffective at flying, but they
quite distinctive pattern and appearancing flight as well.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Bumblebees build their nests underground, seeking out burrows dug by
animals such as mice or bandicoots, whereas honey bees build
their hives above ground, often in tree hollows, and as
the name suggests, honey bees produce significantly more honey compared
to bumble bees. The other main difference between the two
types of bee is the pollination process.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
One things that honey bees can't do is something called
buzz pollination, and this is something that bumble bees are
really well adapted to. So basically what happens is a
bumblebee will land on a particular kind of flower, and
what it does is it vibrates its body, and by
vibrating the body actually helps release extra pollen. So honey
bees can't buzz pollinate. Bumble bees can buzz pollinate, and
(03:48):
that means that bumblebees are really good pollinators of things
like tomatoes and blueberries, and they're up to something like
five times as good at pollinating those particular plants. And
because they're off quite large, they're also very good at
delivering that pollen when they land on a particular flower.
So we know that they're really effective and really good
pollinators for lots of crops, and this is why they're
(04:10):
used worldwide to pollinate crops.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Doctor Finch is also fascinated by the bumblebeas life cycle so.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Every year in the spring, so August September, each colony
has to be founded by a queen. The queen overwinters
by living in the soil in a burrow, often a
burrow dug by a mouse or something like that, and
she'll fly out of that burrow in the spring and
then she has to start a colony all by herself,
so that means collecting lots of pollen and nectar, and
(04:38):
she actually has to incubate her first batch of workers
a bit like a birdwood, so she'll sit on them
and use her body to generate heat and that actually
helps her first generation of workers to develop quicker. And
she has to feed them and provide them with honey
and nectar until they're ready to become adults and start
foraging for themselves. And then they go out and start
foraging for her and helps the caught her in her
(05:00):
colony as she breeds up. So we really want to
understand more how how they do that, how they're surviving
in the Tasmanian landscape, what flora resources they're using, and
what are the major things that might be impacting on
their populations. So are they limited by access to pollen
or nectar by the weather.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
There are many questions about the bumblebee and how it
has survived and thrived here in Tasmania. Coming up in
this episode of I Heart Tazy, we'll talk about the
bumblebee's potential impact on our native flora and fauna and
find out why it's not welcome on the mainland.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I hard Zazi, I heard Dazi.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
They're around two hundred and forty species of bumblebee worldwide,
but just one here in Tazi.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
We have one species in Tasmania called Bombus terrestris. So
Bombus terrestris is native to Europe Western Europe, and particularly
the subspecies that we have originally came from the United Kingdom,
and then it was transplanted to New Zealand, and then
that speech and that species was then transplanted from New
Zealand to Tasmania. But most of the bumblebees in the
(06:13):
world live around the Himalayan region, so they're very well
adapted to cool climates and flying in cool climates.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So it makes sense that the bumblebee would thrive here.
But doctor John Finch, entomologist at the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture,
says we don't actually know much about its local population.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
In the thirty years since they've been introduced, we've kind
of lost track of what they're doing. We know that
geographically they've pretty much spread across the entire island. From
their initial starting point in Hobart, they've gone all the
way across the island and now even been seen on
the top of some of our highest mountains as well.
So we know they're everywhere, but we don't really understand
how their population is growing or changing, and how that
(06:54):
population compares to other parts of the world where they're native.
So that's just a question that we haven't really got
data to answer yet.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
We also don't know about the impact they have on
our agriculture industry.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Really interesting understanding how much these bumblebees are contributing to
our fruit production as a state. So there's about four
hundred million dollars of fruits produced in Tasmania each year,
but because we haven't really been looking for thirty years,
we just don't understand what proportion of that fruit is
produced by bumble bees pollinated by bumble bees. So what
(07:28):
is the dollar value that we could put on bubble
bees and on their contribution to agricultural production.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
In Tasmania or how they've learned to adapt, evolve and
survive here.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
So what plant species do they use in Tasmania? Are
they mainly using European plant species that we've introduced or
are they mainly are they using native species? And where
do they choose to nest in the landscape.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
There's also the question of inbreeding and disease, as the
entire population is believed to have stemmed from just two
coin based dollaways on a boat from Music Island. What
we do know is that they are excellent pollinators, regularly
imported across the world to help pollinate crops. So why
(08:10):
were they never introduced on the mainland.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Well, presently, it's actually illegal to possess bumble bees in Australia,
so they're kind of falling into this a bit of
a black hole, or they're falling into kind of this
gray area where although they're present in Tasmania and not
on the mainland, it's actually illegal to possess them and
use them for the purpose of pollination. And that's because
(08:35):
they're introduced species, So it's against the law to actually
use them in that way.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And what are the concerns around their introduction yes.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So there's a couple of things that could happen, and
I think the main two things are really that they
might compete with some of our native insects and birds
for access to flowers. So remember that we have about
hundred species of native bees in Tasmania. Total, we have
about sixteen hundred species of bee, and the worry is
(09:05):
that bumblebees would compete with those native species for access
to nectar and pollen. Okay, And the other issue actually
goes beyond just that, but we also might be worried
about if bumblebees are competing with our native birds. So
lots of Australia's native birds, things like swift parrots and
other species and other kinds of honey eaters might be
(09:27):
negatively impacted by competition with bomberbrees. So that's one potential issue.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
There's also a worry that they might pollinate and spread
European weeds and pests.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
So things like fox grubs evolved in Europe and North
America and they're considered weeds in Tasmania and Australia, and
they've been evolving with bombabees for millions and millions of years,
and it may well be that the presence of bumblebees
actually helps those weeds spread faster, So we have to
be a little bit careful about how we think and
how we use bumble bees in the future to make
(09:58):
sure that that's not going to be an issue for us.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
So they don't want bumblebees on the mainland. But now
that it's well established here in Tasmania, are there people
that don't want bumblebees here either?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I think there probably are people who who are concerned
about their presence, just like they're concerned about lots of
other introduced feral animals and weeds as well. So if really,
if you've got to think about you think about bumble
bees like you think about honeybees. They're what they are
is they're domesticated, well for a larger part, they're domesticated animals,
(10:30):
just like you know sheep, cows, pigs and horses and
things like that, which means they're very useful for agriculture,
for pollinating crops, for making products like honey that we eat.
So they're very important to agricultural production system. But we
might not want them in our national parks, just like
we don't want goats and horses and other kinds of
(10:52):
feral animals in our national parks. We try and make
sure that they stay in the agricultural areas. So I
think that people are concerned about these animals, bumble bees
and honeybees escaping international parks and having a negative impact
on those ecosystems. So I'm sure that there are people
who'd like to see them removed from national parks. And
(11:13):
I'm talking about honeybees as well as bumblebees here, but
I would point out that currently pretty much every piece
of fruit grown in Tasmania and many of other other
main food crops will be pollinated by these species, so
they're incredibly important to agricultural productivity and I think it
would be unwise to get rid of them.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Doctor Finch says that controlling the bumblebee population is tricky
as you can't restrict where they go.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
One of the options, like they do in other parts
of the world, is to confine the colonies within a box,
and actually that gives you some ability to control what happens.
So there it's a bit complicated, but basically, at the
end of the life cycle of a colony, the next
generation of queens will leave the colony, so and the
(12:04):
queens are quite large. So what you can do is
you can put a little kind of cat flap on
that box. That means the larger queens can't leave, and
that means you can restrict the next generation of queens
that leave, and you can prevent them from leaving, and
thereby you can help you can manage that population into
the future and prevent them from spreading into the landscape.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
They here and it wouldn't be easy to get rid
of them. So what is the future of the bumblebee
here in Tasmania.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I think what we really need to do is start
investigating what impact they're having on particularly on our agricultural production,
and do more studies to work out what potential environmental
impacts they might have. And that's pretty challenging for a
few reasons. One of the reasons is we really understand
understand what impacts these species are having on our native animals,
(12:51):
our birds and our bees. But we've got to remember
that honey bees have been living in Tasmania for almost
two hundred years, Okay, so it's really difficult to work
out what's the impact of bomba bees and what's the
impact of honey bees because they'll both be using nectar
in the same way, and they'll both maybe have an
impact on our native species, so that makes it quite challenging.
But it's really important that we understand the potential risks
(13:14):
of using bomba bees or having bombao bees in Tasmania,
and it's also important that we think about their potential
benefits to agriculture as well, in terms of in terms
of increased crop production and in terms of actually not
being reliant entirely on honeybees for all our pollination like
we may have been in the past. So I think
(13:36):
we have to look at that in a very kind
of holistic and open minded way.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And that's it for this week's episode of I Heart Tazzy.
I'm britt Alen. Thanks to your company, My Heart Tazzy.
I heard Dazzy. I think Tasmanians don't really understand that
bumblebees are only found in Tasmania within Australia, and lots
of Australians don't really realize that they're only found in
Tasmania as well.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's been thirty years since bumblebees were first spotted in
our state. But where did they come from and why
aren't they welcome on the mainland. I'm britt Aileen and
this is I Heart Tazzi.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I Heart Dazzy. Bumblebees have been here in Tasmania for
about thirty years, so we think they arrived in and
around the spring summer of nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
This is doctor John Finch, an entomologist at the Tasmanian
Institute of Agriculture. He has a keen interest in insects.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
They're just fascinating, you know. They're so beautiful and have
such interesting biology that I just wanted to keep studying
them and I kind of followed. My interests and my
primary interest really are are pollinators and all the kinds
of beneficial insects and trying to make agriculture more sustainable
and basically a friendlier place to be an insect.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Doctor Finch says, it's believed the bumblebees arrived in our
state on a boat from New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
And they were first discovered in the Hobart Botanic Gardens
and also in Battery Point pretty much within a day
of each other. They've been seen at both those locations.
I think what happened was probably that one or two
queen bumblebees probably came off the boat and then started
nests in multiple locations around Hobart, and it just so
happened that those particular places were filled with all the
(01:31):
plants that they need, all the flowers in particular that
they need to survive and to prosper, so lots of
European plants that they be very much adapted to.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Bumblebees have been in New Zealand for over one hundred years.
Four species were brought in for the pollination of red clover.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Places like New Zealand all the way across Europe North America.
Lots of people will actually buy in special bumblebee colonies
in boxes to put in their crops in their glasshouses
over the growing season in order to pollinate their crops.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
These days, they're primarily used for the large scale greenhouse
pollination of tomato plants, but here in Tasmania they're not
bred for agriculture. Bumblebees just exist in the wild, the
population having grown extensively from those two queen bee stowaways
back in the early nineties, with large round bodies covered
(02:23):
in soft striped, fuzzy fur. The main difference between the
bumblebee and the honeybee, which is the other type of
bee found here in Tasmania is size.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Particularly in the early spring when we see the queen
bumblebees flying around, they're really large and very black with
yellow stripes, so they're much bigger than the European honeybee.
And then later in the season we start to see
lots of bumblebee workers flying around and there a similar
size to the honeybee, but again they're very dark colored
and they kind of fly a bit more slowly and
(02:53):
they bumble, you know, they kind of fly around, kind
of looking a little bit ineffective at flying, but they
quite distinctive pattern and appearancing flight as well.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Bumblebees build their nests underground, seeking out burrows dug by
animals such as mice or bandicoots, whereas honey bees build
their hives above ground, often in tree hollows, and as
the name suggests, honey bees produce significantly more honey compared
to bumble bees. The other main difference between the two
types of bee is the pollination process.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
One things that honey bees can't do is something called
buzz pollination, and this is something that bumble bees are
really well adapted to. So basically what happens is a
bumblebee will land on a particular kind of flower, and
what it does is it vibrates its body, and by
vibrating the body actually helps release extra pollen. So honey
bees can't buzz pollinate. Bumble bees can buzz pollinate, and
(03:48):
that means that bumblebees are really good pollinators of things
like tomatoes and blueberries, and they're up to something like
five times as good at pollinating those particular plants. And
because they're off quite large, they're also very good at
delivering that pollen when they land on a particular flower.
So we know that they're really effective and really good
pollinators for lots of crops, and this is why they're
(04:10):
used worldwide to pollinate crops.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Doctor Finch is also fascinated by the bumblebeas life cycle so.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Every year in the spring, so August September, each colony
has to be founded by a queen. The queen overwinters
by living in the soil in a burrow, often a
burrow dug by a mouse or something like that, and
she'll fly out of that burrow in the spring and
then she has to start a colony all by herself,
so that means collecting lots of pollen and nectar, and
(04:38):
she actually has to incubate her first batch of workers
a bit like a birdwood, so she'll sit on them
and use her body to generate heat and that actually
helps her first generation of workers to develop quicker. And
she has to feed them and provide them with honey
and nectar until they're ready to become adults and start
foraging for themselves. And then they go out and start
foraging for her and helps the caught her in her
(05:00):
colony as she breeds up. So we really want to
understand more how how they do that, how they're surviving
in the Tasmanian landscape, what flora resources they're using, and
what are the major things that might be impacting on
their populations. So are they limited by access to pollen
or nectar by the weather.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
There are many questions about the bumblebee and how it
has survived and thrived here in Tasmania. Coming up in
this episode of I Heart Tazy, we'll talk about the
bumblebee's potential impact on our native flora and fauna and
find out why it's not welcome on the mainland.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
I hard Zazi, I heard Dazi.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
They're around two hundred and forty species of bumblebee worldwide,
but just one here in Tazi.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
We have one species in Tasmania called Bombus terrestris. So
Bombus terrestris is native to Europe Western Europe, and particularly
the subspecies that we have originally came from the United Kingdom,
and then it was transplanted to New Zealand, and then
that speech and that species was then transplanted from New
Zealand to Tasmania. But most of the bumblebees in the
(06:13):
world live around the Himalayan region, so they're very well
adapted to cool climates and flying in cool climates.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So it makes sense that the bumblebee would thrive here.
But doctor John Finch, entomologist at the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture,
says we don't actually know much about its local population.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
In the thirty years since they've been introduced, we've kind
of lost track of what they're doing. We know that
geographically they've pretty much spread across the entire island. From
their initial starting point in Hobart, they've gone all the
way across the island and now even been seen on
the top of some of our highest mountains as well.
So we know they're everywhere, but we don't really understand
how their population is growing or changing, and how that
(06:54):
population compares to other parts of the world where they're native.
So that's just a question that we haven't really got
data to answer yet.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
We also don't know about the impact they have on
our agriculture industry.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Really interesting understanding how much these bumblebees are contributing to
our fruit production as a state. So there's about four
hundred million dollars of fruits produced in Tasmania each year,
but because we haven't really been looking for thirty years,
we just don't understand what proportion of that fruit is
produced by bumble bees pollinated by bumble bees. So what
(07:28):
is the dollar value that we could put on bubble
bees and on their contribution to agricultural production.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
In Tasmania or how they've learned to adapt, evolve and
survive here.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
So what plant species do they use in Tasmania? Are
they mainly using European plant species that we've introduced or
are they mainly are they using native species? And where
do they choose to nest in the landscape.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
There's also the question of inbreeding and disease, as the
entire population is believed to have stemmed from just two
coin based dollaways on a boat from Music Island. What
we do know is that they are excellent pollinators, regularly
imported across the world to help pollinate crops. So why
(08:10):
were they never introduced on the mainland.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Well, presently, it's actually illegal to possess bumble bees in Australia,
so they're kind of falling into this a bit of
a black hole, or they're falling into kind of this
gray area where although they're present in Tasmania and not
on the mainland, it's actually illegal to possess them and
use them for the purpose of pollination. And that's because
(08:35):
they're introduced species, So it's against the law to actually
use them in that way.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And what are the concerns around their introduction yes.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So there's a couple of things that could happen, and
I think the main two things are really that they
might compete with some of our native insects and birds
for access to flowers. So remember that we have about
hundred species of native bees in Tasmania. Total, we have
about sixteen hundred species of bee, and the worry is
(09:05):
that bumblebees would compete with those native species for access
to nectar and pollen. Okay, And the other issue actually
goes beyond just that, but we also might be worried
about if bumblebees are competing with our native birds. So
lots of Australia's native birds, things like swift parrots and
other species and other kinds of honey eaters might be
(09:27):
negatively impacted by competition with bomberbrees. So that's one potential issue.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
There's also a worry that they might pollinate and spread
European weeds and pests.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
So things like fox grubs evolved in Europe and North
America and they're considered weeds in Tasmania and Australia, and
they've been evolving with bombabees for millions and millions of years,
and it may well be that the presence of bumblebees
actually helps those weeds spread faster, So we have to
be a little bit careful about how we think and
how we use bumble bees in the future to make
(09:58):
sure that that's not going to be an issue for us.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
So they don't want bumblebees on the mainland. But now
that it's well established here in Tasmania, are there people
that don't want bumblebees here either?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I think there probably are people who who are concerned
about their presence, just like they're concerned about lots of
other introduced feral animals and weeds as well. So if really,
if you've got to think about you think about bumble
bees like you think about honeybees. They're what they are
is they're domesticated, well for a larger part, they're domesticated animals,
(10:30):
just like you know sheep, cows, pigs and horses and
things like that, which means they're very useful for agriculture,
for pollinating crops, for making products like honey that we eat.
So they're very important to agricultural production system. But we
might not want them in our national parks, just like
we don't want goats and horses and other kinds of
(10:52):
feral animals in our national parks. We try and make
sure that they stay in the agricultural areas. So I
think that people are concerned about these animals, bumble bees
and honeybees escaping international parks and having a negative impact
on those ecosystems. So I'm sure that there are people
who'd like to see them removed from national parks. And
(11:13):
I'm talking about honeybees as well as bumblebees here, but
I would point out that currently pretty much every piece
of fruit grown in Tasmania and many of other other
main food crops will be pollinated by these species, so
they're incredibly important to agricultural productivity and I think it
would be unwise to get rid of them.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Doctor Finch says that controlling the bumblebee population is tricky
as you can't restrict where they go.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
One of the options, like they do in other parts
of the world, is to confine the colonies within a box,
and actually that gives you some ability to control what happens.
So there it's a bit complicated, but basically, at the
end of the life cycle of a colony, the next
generation of queens will leave the colony, so and the
(12:04):
queens are quite large. So what you can do is
you can put a little kind of cat flap on
that box. That means the larger queens can't leave, and
that means you can restrict the next generation of queens
that leave, and you can prevent them from leaving, and
thereby you can help you can manage that population into
the future and prevent them from spreading into the landscape.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
They here and it wouldn't be easy to get rid
of them. So what is the future of the bumblebee
here in Tasmania.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I think what we really need to do is start
investigating what impact they're having on particularly on our agricultural production,
and do more studies to work out what potential environmental
impacts they might have. And that's pretty challenging for a
few reasons. One of the reasons is we really understand
understand what impacts these species are having on our native animals,
(12:51):
our birds and our bees. But we've got to remember
that honey bees have been living in Tasmania for almost
two hundred years, Okay, so it's really difficult to work
out what's the impact of bomba bees and what's the
impact of honey bees because they'll both be using nectar
in the same way, and they'll both maybe have an
impact on our native species, so that makes it quite challenging.
But it's really important that we understand the potential risks
(13:14):
of using bomba bees or having bombao bees in Tasmania,
and it's also important that we think about their potential
benefits to agriculture as well, in terms of in terms
of increased crop production and in terms of actually not
being reliant entirely on honeybees for all our pollination like
we may have been in the past. So I think
(13:36):
we have to look at that in a very kind
of holistic and open minded way.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And that's it for this week's episode of I Heart Tazzy.
I'm britt Alen. Thanks to your company, My Heart Tazzy.
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