Valley Bees Community

Valley Bees held their inaugural public meeting at Kandanga Public Hall on 13 February 2011.

An expected 20-plus crowd of bee enthusiasts (and wanna-bees) quickly turned into an 80-plus crowd, putting smiles on the faces of the organisers. A surprising turn-out for a hot, sticky Sunday afternoon. But well worth it.  And thanks to all the Gympie Permies that showed up in force for support.  Athol launched the project, calling together people concerned with the need to conserve all bees (domestic and native) for the health of our environment and on-going food supply. Also attending was Chris Fuller, from Kin Kin Native bees, who show cased numerous native bee boxes and nesting set-ups to encourage both solitary and social native bees, like the blue-banded bee, resin, carpenter, green metallic and leaf cutter bees. He also shared information and advice on the better known social native bee, the small black trigonia stingless bee.

He also pointed out that the Gympie Landcare nursery is the place to get the best selection of local native flowering plants to support these local native bee populations.

Valley Bees continued to have informal meetings at Kandanga on the 2nd Sunday afternoon of the month, while the Steering

Committee worked out the best organisational model for the group.

And so Valley Bees Community was born.