KZ: Hi Toby! What inspired or influenced your decision to study native bees and ecology?

T: I have always loved being in nature since I was a kid, looking at plants and animals. When I was in high school my school kept honey bee hives and I was able to help look after them as part of my agriculture class. When I was an adult I decided to try to make these interests my job, so I went to university so that I could learn to became a native bee expert.

KZ: Can you share an interesting behind the scenes fact about your job?

T: If you move a bee hive during the day time you will leave some bees behind, because they are outside doing their thing looking for flowers and when they go back home their hive is gone and they have nowhere to go. So I spend a lot of time moving bee hives around at night time when all the bees are safely back at home inside. I use a head torch to see what I’m doing, and I have little plugs that I put into the bee hive entrances to stop them leaving the hive during the trip. Once I forgot to plug a hive entrance when I collected it at night, and the next morning there were a lot of bees flying around inside my car. Oops. That’s a mistake you only make once!

KZ: Do you currently hold any other roles, or work in other fields or organisations relating to bees?

T: I work at the University of Queensland for just half of my working time. In the other half of my work life I have a business called Bee Aware Kids where I visit schools and childcare centres to teach kids about native bees. As part of this work I’m also a beekeeper, growing native stingless bee hives. I love talking about bees and showing bees to people, and kids always get so excited when they get to look inside a real life nest of native bees. I have some native stingless bee hives that have windows in them and I take them with me so people can look inside through the window. It’s always exciting when people get to see the queen bee scurrying around inside the hive!

KZ: Did you study any subjects or courses, take part in any activities or have any hobbies as a child that helped with your career, or gave you skills that you feel you use a lot at work?

T: When I was a child, my parents took me on lots of bushwalks which helped me develop my interest in nature, and at school I was always particularly interested in things related to biology and nature. Being happy, comfortable and curious outside in nature is definitely important in my job.

KZ: What are the best and worst parts of your job?

T: I think I am amazingly lucky that I get paid to watch bees! I just love bees! It’s exciting to be discovering new information about bees. I spend a lot of time thinking about bees, and I even dream about bees sometimes. There are only two bad things about my job: bee stings and spending too much time on my computer. I have had a lot of bee stings over the years! I’m lucky that I don’t have any dangerous reactions to bee stings, but sometimes if I get too many at once I do feel a bit sick and sore. Sometimes I get tired of having to spend so much time working on my computer answering emails, when I would rather be outside looking at bees.

KZ: What has been the personal highlight of your career so far?

T: I have been lucky enough to travel to work with bees in all sorts of exciting and interesting places. I have looked for rare and unusual bees in tropical rainforests and in deserts in other countries, and I’ve also been to lots of exciting places around Australia to look for native bees. I love going to new places to look for cool bees.

KZ: What would K-Zoners be surprised to learn about you?

T: I love to cook food for my family. I am particularly good at making amazing pancakes!

Want to read more of our interview with Tobias Smith? Grab the September 2022 'Challenge Accepted' issue, out now!

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