Sugarbag Dreaming: the significance of bees to Yolngu in Arnhem Land, Australia
Natasha Fijn, 2014
"The practice of searching for sugarbag is integrated within many Yolngu ceremonies and is linked with key ancestral beings.
A highly anticipated activity is sugarbag season where men, women and children undertake excursions into the bush in search of these tiny bees to extract honey from their hives. Clans are connected to different totemic, or philosophical sugarbag complexes, with accompanying Dhuwa and Yirritja kinds of bee.
There is archaeological evidence from radiocarbon dates derived from wax figures found in rock shelters that sugarbag products have been utilized in northern Australia for at least 4,000 years (Nelson, et al.).