2021 kicks off at 1 pm on Sunday 7 Feb 2021 at THECA, 47 Fleming Rd, Chapel Hill, Brisbane. Everyone is welcome to attend in person. There is no need to book, up to 50 people can attend. Branch business will include a discussion on the future directions of the association. The main business commencing at 1:30 is a talk by Tim Heard titled “POP, the cell provisioning and egg laying behaviour of stingless bees”.

To join virtually, go to the ANBA Facebook page at 1:30 pm Brisbane time and you will see the Live event. https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Native.Bee.Association. The Live events are interactive, attendees can ask questions by typing them on the post during the live stream. You can also view the recording later.

POP, the cell provisioning and egg laying behaviour of stingless bees. POP stands for the Provisioning and Oviposition Process. In stingless bees it is a complex and fascinating behavioural sequence which involves construction of new brood cells by workers, provisioning of the cells with larval food by workers, oviposition in the cells by the queen and sealing of the cells by workers. All species exhibit a common pattern of long periods (hours) of exclusive cell construction alternated with short periods (minutes) of food provisioning, queen oviposition and cell sealing. Despite these universal features, a wide variety of species-specific behaviours have been described, e.g. POP occurs in batches in Tetragonula but sequentially in Austroplebeia. Tim will describe and illustrate this process for Australian Stingless bees.  Tim Heard is President of the Australian Native Bee Association and author of The Australian Native Bee Book.