Did you know that New Zealand has it’s own special native bees? Smaller than a bumblebee. Smaller than a honey bee. In fact…

“If bumblebees are like big Mack Trucks bustling down the highway and honey bees are like a million whizzing cars, then native bees are the zippy little scooters.”

There are 28 species of NZ native bees, which are also known as ngaro huruhuru. Kiwi bees don’t make honey and very rarely sting. They are gentle, and don’t live in hives like honey bees.

They like to live alone in holes in banks, sand, old logs and more. They work very hard at digging out tiny burrows ready for their eggs. But if they can find a burrow vacated by another insect, that’s even better. They are fantastic mothers, making sure every egg has plenty to eat when it becomes larva in its own special dug out burrow.

There are three types of New Zealand native bee:

Hairy Bee – mostly black with fluffy faces and some are covered in orange-yellow fluff

Masked Bee – These bees are teeny-tiny at only 7mm-9mm long and carry flower pollen and nectar around inside their bodies!

Sweat Bee – Sounds gross? They’re not like flies who puke on your food to eat it, but they do like the taste of your sweat. These bees are even smaller than Masked Bees!

Native bees don’t make honey but they are very important pollinators, helping plants and trees make new seeds to make more plants! They are invaluable for our many native plants.

Mama bees do all the work. They dig and strengthen the burrows, lay the eggs, collect the food, and then guard the burrows themselves!

The tiny black creatures you shoo away from you in the summer might not be flies or even sandflies. They might be one of our gentle native bees checking you out.

This hardback book is beautifully produced and absolutely chocka with ngaro huruhuru – native bee facts, info bubbles, photos and illustrations.

At first the reader is introduced to these tiny creatures – their sizes, different groups and names. There are amazing close up photos of each type of bee, showing how distinct they are from each other.

We learn about their jobs in nature, their workload (for the Mama bees), and their families. The life cycle of these bees is illustrated within the plethora of full colour illustrations and photos, along with their senses, habitats and threats against them. We even meet stunning native bees from around the world.

With a How Can You Help? page, a full glossary, index, and over a dozen sources and online resources to check native bees out further, we can learn even more about our amazing ngaro huruhuru o Aotearoa / Native Bees of New Zealand.

I can’t help thinking of all the (flies) I’ve shooed away, when all along they could of been our tiny, friendly bees! 

Excellent New Zealand Non-Fiction for every kind of library – not just schools!

Author – Rachel Weston

Illustrator – Richard Holt

Non-Fiction – All Ages

(2024, Weston Books, Native Bees, Pollinators, Ngaro huruhuru, Aotearoa New Zealand, NZ, Fascinating Facts, Nature, Burrow, Life Cycle)