Recently on this list, several authoritative sources with references
weighed in to say bumblebees have not been established in Australia. Nobody
has ever claimed that there were native Australian bumblebees. Until now.
   According th Gary Nabhan and Stephen Buchmann in "The Forgotten
Pollinators" (1996) native Australian bumblebees (along with carpenter bees)
do a better job of pollinating Australian flora than honey bees do. I will
quote this a little long because I don't want anybody to say I'm taking this
out of context:
   "From an ecological and evolutionary perspective, honeybees may pose a
hitherto unsuspected threat to life in the bush. Not only do they displace
native pollinators—both insects and vertebrates—from flowers but they do so
without effectvely triggering the pollination mechanisms of the crop plants
or native flowers they visit. A significant portion of the Australian flora
requires vibratory pollen harvesting to set fruit—buzz pollination—and
honeybees are incapable of this feat. Blooms of deadly nightshade blossoms
and native bush tomatoes all require other pollinators to effect fruit set.
Whereas bumblebees and carpenter bees do an excellent job and routinely set
large fruits full of seeds, honeybees leave these plants unfertilized.
Although honeybees do not use floral sonication to harvest pollen, they are
often quite abundant on Australian blossoms with pored anthers and must
account for some pollination and seed set." (Pg. 178)
    Am I reading this correctly as saying that native Australian bumblebees
routinely set large fruits full of seeds in Australia?
John Mitchell