Dear List Members,
In reply to Nick Wallingford's message about the importation of  bumble bees to Australia and New Zealand, four species were established in New Zealand from importations of queens from England in 1885 and 1906 - Bombus terrestris, B. ruderatus, B. subterraneus and B. hortorum.
According to Buttermore (1997), Rayment (1935) claimed that B. terrestris and B. ruderatus were unsuccessfully introduced to Australia in 1884, 1885, 1927 and 1930, but he gave no further information about the 19th century dates. Buttermore (1997) stated that to his knowledge the earliest documented attempt to establish bumble bees in Australia was the importation of 94 queens of an unknown species from New Zealand to New South Wales in 1891 and 1892. Others from New Zealand were released in Tasmania in 1909, and Rayment in the 1930s imported queens from New Zealand to the State of Victoria.
There were no establishments form all these efforts.
However B. terrestris is now spreading over Tasmania from an establishment by unknown means in Hobart, discovered in February 1992.
To my knowledge no New Zealand beekeeper has ever regarded bumble bees as a problem to beekeeping. Dead bumble bees are sometimed found outside beehives after being stung while attempting to enter the hive, and of course bumble bees remove pollen and nectar from many flowers that honey bees forage upon. However bumble bee numbers are so low compared to honey bees that they rarely ever are even mentioned by beekeepers, and if they are it is only out of curiosity about their life cycle compared to that of honey bees.

Regards,
Barry Donovan
Canterbury Agruiculture and Science Centre
Lincoln
South Island
New Zealand.



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