Insects & honey
Native bees and sugarbag
dabu · kuja · kalburiji · mawal · kawar · mandi-mandi · dabadaba · wuju · wunbaTetragonula and Austroplebeia spp. (native stingless bees); Apis mellifera (wunba, the introduced honey bee)
Sugarbag is the honey of the small native bees that nest in hollow trees and in the ground. Kuku Yalanji has a whole vocabulary for it: dabu and kuja for bees and their honey, kawar for the 'honey bread', mandi-mandi for comb, dabadaba for the brood, and wuju for the grass sponge used to sop honey up[1]. Finding a nest meant watching for bees, cutting into the tree, and getting the honey out with a frayed cane or a grass swab. The native bees are harmless. The introduced honey bee, wunba, and the hornets and paper wasps are not[2][1].
Hann River Cape York
Possum People's country on the upper river and Thaypan (Kuku Thaypan) country downstream: stringybark and bloodwood woodland and a spring-fed sandy river that runs north-east from the Great Dividing Range, past the Peninsula Developmental Road, into Rinyirru (Lakefield) and the North Kennedy. Not Kuku Yalanji country: the Kuku Yalanji words on this page are the dictionary's, not the Hann's own languages. Place guide
Sugarbag is a food of the Hann country too. To the Kuku Thaypan Elders of the middle and lower Hann, Arear is sugarbag: 'the honey, the hive and the bee'[9]. The common sugarbag bee here is Tetragonula hockingsi[9], and the Atlas of Living Australia holds 24 Tetragonula records (1993–2026) and none of Austroplebeia in a box of about 90 × 85 km around the middle Hann, Laura and western Rinyirru[10]. The Elders say active hives are fewer than they were, and link the decline to the wrong kind of fire[9].
Sugarbag trees here
In south-east Cape York, archaeologists and Traditional Owners have recorded hundreds of Cooktown ironwood (Erythrophleum) trees bearing sugarbag scars, where people cut into the trunk to reach a nest. The scars show a sequence from stone axes to steel axes[6]. That study was in the Laura sandstone country, just north of Western Yalanji country on the Palmer and Mitchell rivers. The Laura Rangers were part of that study[6]. Kuku Thaypan Elders found more old scars on their country than active hives, and found living hives inside old scars; some hollows are natural, where a branch has fallen[9]. The Atlas has 54 Cooktown ironwood records in the Hann box (1970–2026)[10].
Its year here
In the Elders' calendar, as the country dries after the wet, the south-east winds pick up and the days turn clear and hot, Arear and the butterflies 'begin to increase in number and activity'[9]. Fires that are too hot, or at the wrong time, scorch the canopy and kill the flowers the bees need[9].
How the people of this country took it
Kuku Thaypan (Standley 2019)[9]:
- Cut in carefully just below the nest entrance. Old stone-axe holes are small and rounded; later people also cut with sharpened horseshoes from the gold-rush years, then steel axes.
- Tie a mop of softened sugarbag grass, Kwern Yulan, to the end of a stick, push it in and soak the honey out.
- Close the hole with wax and grass, so the bees could repair the nest. Dr George: 'If the axe mark is big and a lot taken bees will go nest somewhere else.'
- Next time, cut below the last cut, so the oldest scar is at the top.
Burning. Sugarbag nests 'were known and burnt away from' when country was burnt[9].
Princess Charlotte Bay (Roth, c. 1900). At Princess Charlotte Bay people told young brood from old, and honey from the young brood was a delicacy usually kept for the elder men[4].
Kuku Thaypan sugarbag knowledge was put before the 1996 land claim to Lakefield National Park[9]. Stories and lore of sugarbag belong to their custodians.
On country today
The middle and lower Hann are Thaypan native title country, determined in November 2023 and held by the Awu-Laya Indigenous Corporation[11]. Downstream, Rinyirru is jointly managed by its Traditional Owners and the Queensland Government[12]. Leave scarred trees alone: they are the record of who worked this country[6].
Upper Mitchell Western Yalanji
Western Yalanji country west of the Great Dividing Range: dry open woodland cut by the sandy, paperbark-lined upper Mitchell River, around Karma Waters and Mount Carbine. Place guide
On the Western Yalanji Mitchell, the Laura sugarbag-tree study is the nearest record, just to the north. Cooktown ironwood grows in open forest across Cape York Peninsula and north-east Queensland[7], so the same kind of sugarbag tree can be expected in the woodland around Mt Carbine and the Mitchell. The nearest written record of finding a nest is Roth's from the middle Palmer: the bee smeared with fat and feather-down and followed home (How-to, step 4)[4].
On country today
On Western Yalanji country, the August 2026 Federal Court determination recognised non-exclusive rights over most of the area to access Country, camp, hunt, fish and gather natural resources, alongside pastoral and mining interests[13]. Visitors on Western Yalanji country, including station country on the Mitchell, need the Traditional Owners' and landholders' permission.
Eastern coast Eastern Kuku Yalanji
Eastern Kuku Yalanji country: rainforest, beaches, mangroves, reef and the short steep rivers from the Daintree to the Bloomfield and the Annan.
On the Bloomfield River people used a chewed lawyer-cane withe to draw honey out of the tree-hole[5].
The Bloomfield lawyer-cane mop
On the Bloomfield the mop was a length of lawyer cane[5]:
- Chew the end and let it dry until it is frayed.
- Poke it up into the tree-hole, pull it out, suck off the honey and repeat.
- Carry the withe with you: people took them from camp to camp[5].
On country today
In 2021, 160,213 hectares from Mossman to Cooktown, including the Daintree, Ngalba-bulal, Kalkajaka and Hope Islands national parks, were returned to Eastern Kuku Yalanji ownership. They are now jointly managed with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service[14]. In national parks, all plants, animals and natural and cultural resources are protected and must not be disturbed[15], so cutting a nest out is a matter for Traditional Owners, not visitors.
Everywhere
Names
The dictionary distinguishes several bees. Dabu is a small black bee that nests in trees and has a light sting, and the word also means its honey[1]. Kuja is a small stingless bee whose nest is in the ground, and it too names the honey[1]. Kalburiji, mawal and nakawarra are recorded only as 'species of bee', yarrka is 'the smallest bee in the bush', and walarr is a honey bee 'almost like the dabu, but bigger', which nests in trees[1]. Wunba is the English bee and its honey, and now also honey bought in a store[1].
The parts of a nest have their own names: kawar 'honey bread of bees', mandi-mandi 'honeycomb', dabadaba 'larvae and eggs of any kind of bee', and jila or nyumbirr for beeswax[1]. Honey is described as janbar or nguyal, 'sticky'[1].
Description
Australia's native honey bees are the stingless bees, in the two genera Tetragonula and Austroplebeia[2]. They cannot sting. They live in colonies inside a tree hollow or other cavity and seal up every opening except the entrance with wax and resin[2].
The Kuku Yalanji words match what a cut-open nest shows: honey (dabu, kuja), the stored 'honey bread' (kawar), comb (mandi-mandi), brood (dabadaba) and wax (jila)[1]. The introduced European honey bee, wunba, is different: it stings, and leaves its sting in the skin[3].
Where they live
Stingless bees usually nest in hollows in large living or dead trees[2]. The dictionary agrees for dabu and walarr, which nest in trees, but puts kuja's nest in the ground. Hornets and bumblebees (wurrbu) are also said to nest in a stump or the ground[1].
Sugarbag is a food of both the rainforest and the dry country. People cut into trees to reach the nests, and the old cuts, sugarbag scars, last for generations: see each place below.
Seasons
Speaking of North Queensland in general, Roth wrote that honey was hunted in the dry season, and roots and fruits in the wet[4]. In the north-west central districts he found that the season changed how a nest was found. In winter people looked for tiny pellets of bee dung on the ground around the butt of a tree. In summer they watched for bees going in and out[4]. The dictionary's season words are kambar 'wet season' and wangariji 'the hot season'[1].
Uses
Food. Honey was eaten straight from the nest, sopped up with a swab, or mixed with water. On the lower Tully River, Roth recorded that people took honey from one kind of bee only, and that it was usually mixed with water and drunk, and never kept long enough to ferment[4].
Wax. Beeswax was a glue. Roth describes it being roasted over the fire, squeezed in the hands, then warmed and hammered in turns. It was used to stick things in the hair, mend fibre twine and stop cracks in water-carriers[5]. Kuku Yalanji yikari is 'hardened beeswax, hardened with ironwood root juice', and it was used in making spears[1].
Mourning. The dictionary records that honeycomb (mandi-mandi) was put into the hair after the death of a husband or child[1].
How sugarbag was found and taken
Finding the nest (Roth's general North Queensland record[4]):
- Watch the trees. In warm weather, look for bees going in and out of a small hole in a trunk or limb.
- Look at the ground. In cool weather, look for the tiny pellets of bee dung that fall around the butt of a tree.
- Listen and tap. Put your ear to a hole at the base of the tree and listen for the hum. Tap the trunk with your fingers or a stone to find where it is hollow.
- Follow a bee home. On the middle Palmer River, neighbouring Western Yalanji country, people caught a bee in the open, smeared it with goanna or snake fat, stuck a little feather-down on it, let it go and followed the white speck back to the nest[4].
Taking the honey:
- Cut in with an axe, warrbi, or in the old days a stone axe, kulbanmuku. Nyandal is 'to chop'[1]. Scarred ironwoods show the cut going through the bark into the hollow heartwood[6][7].
- Or mop it out without felling. Roth says people commonly used mops and sponges to save the labour of cutting away the timber[4]. The Bloomfield lawyer-cane mop is under the eastern coast below.
- Make a grass sponge, wuju. Pull up two or three handfuls of grass, take off the roots, and rub the grass hard between your hands, sometimes with water. Leave it to dry into a small springy bunch[5]. Roth found such swabs in dilly-bags right across North Queensland. The Kuku Yalanji wuju is a grass sponge used to sop up honey or soup[1].
- Sop and squeeze. Soak up the honey with the sponge and suck it, or squeeze it into water to make a sweet drink, as on the lower Tully[4].
- Keep the wax. Save the waxy nest material and work it into a lump by roasting, squeezing, warming and hammering[5].
Wasp brood was eaten too. On the lower Tully people crept up to a paper-wasp nest, held a bundle of burning grass or tea-tree bark under it to kill or drive off the adults, then pulled the comb and picked the larvae out to eat raw[4].
Safety
Native stingless bees are harmless[2]. Honey bees (wunba) and wasps are not. Honey bees leave their sting in the skin. Scrape it out sideways with a fingernail or card rather than pulling it, which squeezes in more venom. Wasps can sting again and again[3]. Paper wasps (murma) have 'a bad sting' and hang their nests in trees, and hornets (mulma, wurrbu) nest in stumps and the ground, so look before you put a hand into a hollow[1].
A bee or wasp sting can cause anaphylaxis. Trouble breathing, a swollen throat, collapse, or vomiting and stomach pain soon after a sting are an emergency. Use an adrenaline autoinjector if the person has one, then call 000[3]. Anyone with a known sting allergy should not rob a honey-bee nest.
Chopping into trees brings the risk of axe cuts and falling limbs. Carrying burning grass to smoke a nest can start a bushfire in dry weather.
On Country today
Section 211 of the Native Title Act 1993 protects native title holders' hunting, gathering and fishing for personal, domestic or non-commercial communal needs from licence and permit requirements[8]. Who holds native title differs from place to place: see each place below, and ask the Traditional Owners. Old sugarbag-scarred trees are part of the cultural record and should be left alone[6].
Language
Dabu and walarr are also moiety names[1]. Useful words: warrbi 'axe'; kulbanmuku 'axe, originally a stone axe'; nyandal 'to chop'; jila 'beeswax'; janbar 'sticky, also used for sticky honey'[1].
References
- Hershberger, H. D. & Hershberger, R. (1982). Kuku-Yalanji Dictionary. Work Papers of SIL-AAB, Series B, Volume 7. With Toby Bloomfield, Roy Friday, Billy Roberts, Hector and Doris Sykes, Joe Walker and others. www.sil.org/resources/archives/18038
- Aussie Bee (Australian Native Bee Research Centre). How to rescue nests of stingless bees. www.aussiebee.com.au/stinglessbees.html
- healthdirect Australia. Bee and wasp stings. www.healthdirect.gov.au/bee-and-wasp-stings
- Roth, W. E. (1901). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 3: Food — its search, capture, and preparation. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Sect. 3 'Food in season'; sect. 11 'Bees (honey). Wasps (larvae)' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
- Roth, W. E. (1904). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 7: Domestic implements, arts, and manufactures. Brisbane: Government Printer. Bloomfield River information from R. Hislop. — Sect. 14 'Cements of animal origin' (beeswax); sect. 47 'Swabs' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
- Wallis, L. A., Burke, H., et al. (2024). A preliminary study of culturally modified sugarbag trees in the Laura Sandstone Basin, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Queensland Archaeological Research 27: 21–39. researchnow.flinders.edu.au/en/publications/a-preliminary-study-of-culturally-modified-sugarbag-trees-in-the-/
- Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants (RFK8), Erythrophleum chlorostachys. CSIRO / Lucidcentral. apps.lucidcentral.org/rainforest/text/entities/Erythrophleum_chlorostachys.htm
- Australian Law Reform Commission. Review of the Native Title Act 1993 (DP 82), ch. 8: Relevant provisions in the Native Title Act (s 211). www.alrc.gov.au/publication/review-of-the-native-title-act-1993-dp-82/8-the-nature-and-content-of-native-title/relevant-provisions-in-the-native-title-act/
- Standley, P.-M. (2019). The importance of campfires to effective conservation. PhD thesis, James Cook University. Records the fire and country knowledge of Kuku Thaypan Elders Dr Tommy George and Dr George Musgrave. — p. 28 and n. 22 (Arear); pp. 107–112 (the Sugarbag project); p. 327 (sugarbag grass); p. 334 (burning away from nests); pp. 355–359 (harvest scars and methods); p. 378 (the drying season) researchonline.jcu.edu.au/64274/
- Atlas of Living Australia. Occurrence records in a box of about 90 × 85 km around the middle Hann River, Laura and western Rinyirru (lat −15.6 to −14.8, long 143.5 to 144.3), queried 28 October 2026: Tetragonula 24 records (1993–2026), none of Austroplebeia; Erythrophleum (Cooktown ironwood) 54 records (1970–2026). biocache.ala.org.au/occurrences/search?q=genus%3ATetragonula
- Ross on behalf of the Cape York United #1 Claim Group v State of Queensland (No 20) (Thaypan determination) [2023] FCA 1315 (Federal Court of Australia, 2 November 2023). — Determination area and waters; prescribed body corporate (Awu-Laya Indigenous Corporation); affidavit evidence on hunting www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2023/2023fca1315
- Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. Nature, culture and history: Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park (CYPAL) (web page, last updated 1 July 2024; accessed 28 October 2026). parks.qld.gov.au/parks/rinyirru-lakefield/about/culture
- National Indigenous Times (13 August 2026). Western Yalanji determination brings Cape York native title 'to the finish line'. nit.com.au/13-08-2026/25941/western-yalanji-determination-brings-cape-york-native-title-to-the-finish-line
- National Indigenous Times (1 October 2021). Daintree Rainforest handed back to Eastern Kuku Yalanji people. nit.com.au/01-10-2021/2393/daintree-rainforest-handed-back-to-eastern-kuku-yalanji-people
- Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. Camping: legal requirements. parks.qld.gov.au/camping/legal-requirements
From the community
Know this one? Add the words you use for it, what it is for, how it is done, a correction, or a photo from country. It shows here straight away with your name on it. Please keep anything restricted or sacred off the site.
Loading…