The NT Branch got together for our monthly meeting on Monday 8 April 2024. As usual this meeting included some
plant swaps and a lot of banter between our members. The branch shared some yummy Banana cake, which was made
using home grown bananas pollinated by our local T. mellipes species.
Our new meeting room This time we met in Mr Mark Turner MLA Member for Blain’s Conference room at Oasis Shopping Village. It was great to trial this facility for us to ascertain its suitability for future meetings where we are facilitating Virtual Presentations. The meeting room has Wi-Fi connectivity and a large projector screen which are both features that will make it easier for us to host Virtual Presentations in the future.
We have secured this meeting room again for our next branch meeting which is scheduled for Monday 13 May 2024, where
we will be hosting our second Virtual Presentation for the year. Stay tuned on our Facebook group as we will be publishing details in relation to our next guest speaker very soon. Thank you to Mark, Member for Blain, for making this room available for our branch.
Our new gazebo
In exciting news, our new NT Branch branded 3×3 gazebo has been delivered! Branch members David Sutcliffe and Anne
Patton tested out the set up and pack down process and snapped some shots. Doesn’t it look fantastic?! A big thank
you to the ANBA Inc. parent body for the start-up grant that gave us the funding to purchase this. And a big thank you to
our wonderful Events Coordinator Anne for putting the effort into making it happen.
Observation hive
Our branch is full of talented members who like to make their own hives and experiment with new ideas. This month David
Sutcliffe brought in an observation hive that he had made using recycled timber. The observation hive was very well
constructed and half the volume of an OATH hive, so our members think it would be a great size for our common social
stingless bee species – T. mellipes. All that’s needed now is some rescued bees to populate the hive, so that we can use it
for education and awareness raising at future community
events. Branch members often get called out to attend rescues, so it shouldn’t bee too long before the observation hive is the new home to some native stingless bees.
Agrifutures workshop
David Shea was given the opportunity to attend the AgriFutures funded Pollinator Workshop last month. David shared his experience with the NT Branch at our recent meeting and has provided a small blog on his experience for us to include in the Cross-Pollinator:
“I was given the opportunity to attend the AgriFutures funded Pollinator Workshop held at the Brisbane Convention Centre in March. It was hosted by some great researchers in the field of pollinators. We had a diverse group of people who had a stake in the potential research to come from this workshop. It was great to see, and to contribute to the direction that research needs to move to further the emerging industries such as Australian Native Pollinators and Crops. This kind of research will be of great benefit to the Northern Territory’s agriculture industry, in particular farmers plus current and future pollination businesses. It will be exciting to see the work done and to maybe even participate in such research projects in the future.”
It sounds like it was a fantastic experience for David, and it was certainly a win for the NT Branch in terms of gaining representation in these forums to promote and encourage more awareness and research into the stingless bee species available within our regions.
From Sherronna Nowland sherronna_schaefe@live.com.au
