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As their name suggests, the bee species builds resin pots to protect their brood, with solitary mother bees hanging their pots individually from twigs or as clusters on the bark of trees.

鈥淭he group was previously considered to contain seven species, and in 1992 an additional 18 were named in the master鈥檚 thesis of Queensland Museum鈥檚 Dr Judith King, who is a co-author on our paper,鈥� says lead author Dr Remko Leijs, from the South Australian Museum.

鈥淥ver the years, we discovered a further 23 species during field collection trips, including during various surveys, which look for the unknown and hence regularly result in the discovery of new invertebrate and plant species.鈥�

Bush Blitz, a partnership between the Australian Government, BHP Billiton and Earth Watch Australia, documents fauna and flora from selected national reserves.

It also provides funding for the description of new species, and this enabled the researchers to compare the newly collected species to those present in Australian entomological collections.

鈥淭his uncovered an additional 20 undescribed species, hidden in the collections, which highlights the importance of entomological collections as a repository for these kinds of discoveries,鈥� Dr Leijs says.

Dr Katja Hogendoorn, from the University of 糖心vlog官网, says there is still much to be discovered about Australia鈥檚 bees, and their vital role as pollinators.

鈥淒espite their environmental and economic importance as pollinators of native plants and crops, the Australian bee fauna is poorly understood,鈥� says Dr Hogendoorn, a co-author on the study published in the .

鈥淎n estimated one-third of bee species remains unknown to science, and dearth of funding for taxonomic work hampers our ability to assess the conservation status and undertake action to protect native bees.

鈥淲e may be losing species that we don鈥檛 even know about yet.鈥�

There are around 1700 known native bee species in Australia. This discovery raises the number of known resin pot bee species to 78 鈥撀燼lmost half of which are known from a single location only.

Dr James Dorey, a co-author from the University of Wollongong, says more research is needed to understand what threats resin pot bees might be facing.

鈥淭hese species are likely to have a limited distribution, but realistically, we don鈥檛 have enough information about their occurrence or population sizes to say much about their conservation status,鈥� he says.