AGM of the National ANBA, plus a seminar

All are welcome to attend in person at Bulimba Community Centre, 1 Barramul St, Bulimba, Brisbane. Free for members, $5 for non-members.

ANBA members can also attend online, a link to join will be sent by email approximately 1-2 days prior to the event.

• 2pm AEST / 3pm AEDT - AGM
• 2:30pm AEST / 3:30pm AEDT - talk
• E.g. AGM starts 2pm in Qld, 3pm in Sydney, Please adjust for your time zone.

In preparation for our AGM, we have emailed all members the minutes of the last 2025 AGM, and the 2026 Presidents report. We will email a reminder that includes the nominations for all positions to the management Committee.  We hope that members read these documents in advance and be prepared to vote on the motions and elections.

We will then hear from researcher Aiden Beauglehole on the topic:

What Lives with Our Native Bees? Exploring Tetragonula hockingsi Microbiome

Abstract: 

Australian native bees support both natural ecosystems and agricultural pollination, yet we still know relatively little about the microorganisms associated with many native bee species. Our current work is investigating the microbial communities associated with the native stingless bee Tetragonula hockingsi across tropical North Queensland.

Using samples contributed by native bee keepers and community members, we are using DNA sequencing to explore the bacteria and other microorganisms associated with these bees and their colonies. This allows us to begin asking whether microbial communities differ between colonies and locations, which microorganisms are consistently associated with healthy bees, and whether microbial sequencing could eventually help identify changes linked to disease or environmental stress.

We are also beginning to combine this microbial work with transcriptomics and proteomics, which let us look at which genes are being used and which proteins are being produced by both the bees and their associated microbes, helping us understand how the bee and its microbiome interact as a biological system.

This talk will present our preliminary microbial sequencing work, discuss what we can learn from the native bee microbiome, and explore how community-supported sampling could be expanded across different bee species and regions. In the longer term, this approach could contribute to a broader understanding of native bee health and provide new tools for monitoring the resilience of Australian pollinators.

Biography:

Aiden Beauglehole is a biotechnology researcher at Queensland University of Technology with a background spanning zoology, systems biology, microbial biotechnology and large-scale bioprocessing. He completed his undergraduate degree in zoology before undertaking a PhD in systems biology, where he focused on understanding interactions across large biological datasets. He is particularly interested in using high-throughput sequencing, proteomics and computational analysis to understand complex biological systems.