Celebrate World Bee Day in Canberra on May 20

It's some sweet coincidence that World Bee Day falls on May 20, election eve, and there'll be plenty of activities around town over the weekend to take the sting out of the election result.

Cormac Farrell has been the head beekeeper of Parliament House for close to five years. It's a voluntary position and he oversees the bees in four honeybee hives and two native stingless beehives.

He says that hives, like ministries perhaps, can be a little placid or a bit angry depending on a few different things, but he's sure the bees get to know the handlers, and vice versa.

"I was really nervous the first time I opened a hive and saw all the happenings inside," he says. "It was just a maelstrom of bees going everywhere, luckily not angry ones, a friend had set me up with quite a nice colony, with a nice easy going queen and they were very forgiving of my clumsy beginner fingers."

Now Farrell is an integral part of the Canberra bee community. As well as managing the hives at Parliament House, he looks after ones at a few different venues. Canberra it seems is abuzz with hives in its urban setting.

At QT Canberra there are two rooftop hives, an Italian bee, Apis mellifera ligustica, that produces a honey with a beautiful caramel flavour with subtle woody and floral tones. Executive chef Michael Box uses it throughout the menu in the hotel.

"For breakfast we use the honeycomb on handmade sourdough crumpets," he says. "At dinner, we filter the honey through our malt vinaigrette with the Brussels sprouts, use it on fried zucchini flowers and cheeseboards and on the new winter menu, we'll use it to glaze some duck."

The QT hives, like others in Canberra, were affected by the smoke from the bushfires but Box says this resulted in the hive frames imparting a subtle smokey tone alongside a rich molasses-like colour.

At Pialligo Estate there are 12 hives on two sites, one in the orchard alongside the plum trees, the other in the bottom of the garden on the banks of the Molonglo River. The bees here are European honey bees.

Executive chef Mark Glenn features it on the dessert menu in the estate-grown figs, crostoli and fig leaf creme.

"The figs are dressed in honey and then blowtorched to caramelise it," he says. "The honey is also used in the hazelnut praline for the same dish and we use it for dressings and seasonings throughout the menu."

Farrell says Canberra's apiarists are a supportive group, the ACT Beekeepers Association holds regular workshops and meetings and can even help if you have a swarm on your property you'd like removed.

There are many events planned for World Bee Day, May 20, from events at different embassies to a special day at the Capital Region Farmers' Market on May 21.

There are events at the Belgian Embassy in Yarralumla on May 21. The Swiss Embassy is hosting an event at Kambri, ANU, on May 22 where the film Hive will be shown and Swiss wine, finger food and honey-based desserts will be served. Money raised at some of these events will go towards the rebuilding of hives in Ukraine.

At the farmer's markets, manager Sarah Power says the morning will offer many different things.

"For many of our stallholders, particularly those that specialise in fruit, bees are the number one source for pollination," she says. "Especially within the Canberra region with so many orchards around Young and those areas, we need a healthy bee population to be out collecting pollen and inadvertently ensuring fruit keeps growing."

There will be activities such as a Honey Trail scavenger hunt and bee-themed face painting alongside local honey stallholders and workshops from ACT for Bees, a local collaborative promoting a bee friendly region.

"Pretty much anything that requires blossoms to fruit requires pollination, and basically the only way trees get pollination here is our bees, which is why the market really wants to help educate our visitors across all ages and demographics about bees and their vital role as pollinators and to food production," Power says.

Farrell says there are many things home gardeners can do to be bee friendly.

"It's as easy as growing flowers," he says. "Create food for bees and you get the bonus of the beauty of flowers. There are a whole lot of bee friendly flowers that are easy to grow and provide food all year round."

He says bees are fond of natives such as banksias, callistemons and correas.

"They don't mind exotics either. They love catmint, borage, all the lavenders are bee magnets, and sunflowers, a rosemary hedge is also one of the best things you can have."

He also suggests placing a bee hotel in your garden, those little houses made of sticks and mud which are readily available at garden centres.

He says Canberra is a great environment for bees with an estimated 300 species, more than would be expected.

"We've got a slightly higher concentration of native bees too, which in part can be put down to the presence of the Australian National Botanical Gardens."

Australia has more than 2000 species of native bees, "more than a continent our size would expect but we're such a mega-diverse country," he says.

But increasingly bees are under threat. Globally, bee numbers are declining rapidly. Destruction of their natural habitat, intensive farming practices, and pests and diseases are just some of the complex reasons driving a decline in both the number and diversity of bees.

"The whole idea of World Bee Day is to have some fun, try some nice honey, but raising awareness of the situation is really important too," says Farrell.

"Without bees we'd be in a lot of trouble and most of us don't think about it."