Native Bees - Art Exhibition & Research Project

A Charm of Native Bees - an Art Exhibition

Did you know that there are over 2000 bees that are native to Australia? Although the most common bee we see around Canberra is the exotic European Honey Bee, Apis mellifera, there are so many other bees to see and they are nearly all native.

You are invited to an Art Exhibition at the Australian National Botanic Gardens. See the invitation at the bottom of this page. The subject is Australia’s beautiful native bees with the title “A Charm of Native Bees”. It runs from 29 February to 1 April 2024 and the artist is Cheryl Hodges. She is an accomplished artist of all things natural. She also teaches art and you can see her work and learn of her other activities on her website: https://www.cherylhodges.com/

During the period of the exhibition there will also be a guided walk by Canberra’s bee expert Peter Abbott, looking for native bees in the ANBG gardens. To register for the walk, visit:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/guided-walk-native-bees-with-peter-abbott-tickets-841022740657?aff=oddtdtcreator

Both Cheryl and Peter are members of Canberra Nature Map and their profiles can be viewed here: cherylhodges and PeterA

There will be other activities during the period of the exhibition including painting workshops, some activites for children and watching Cheryl at work. For more information you can contact Cheryl via email at this address: hodgespc@bigpond.com

Native Bees of Canberra Home Gardens - a Research Project

While enjoying the marvellous paintings during the exhibition you can learn a lot about our native bees and apply that knowledge to citizen science. Just report the sightings of native bees that you see in our region on Canberra Nature Map. In particular you can contribute to a research project entitled Native Bees of Canberra Home Gardens. This is a new project we have started up and I have created a “Collection” with this name. Visit:

https://canberra.naturemapr.org/collections/sightings/11846

https://canberra.naturemapr.org/collections/guide/11846

This project on Native Bees in Canberra Gardens is part of a larger research project called Insect Pollinators of Canberra Home Gardens. It is being organised by Meredith Cosgrove (mcosgrove) and aims to better understand insect pollinators in Canberra's home gardens. Through this we hope to learn about what are the best garden plantings to support insect biodiversity in Canberra. You can contact Meredith here through her message page.

So if you have any sightings of native bees in your garden, then please add them this collection. We are not just looking for new sightings. You can add your old sightings to the Collection as well. Thank you in advance for helping out.