The Bees were on the wrong end of the 17-4 penalty tally and coach Phil Jones said it was costly with a 27-12 loss.

"There was nothing in it the first-half, both teams were pretty even, we went with them for a while," he said.

"Very little ball and any ball we had wasn't quality ball so our backs didn't really get the chance to do much.

"You can't win games against those really good sides if you don't have 50 per cent of the ball."

Yellow cards saw one player sent from the field mid-way through the match.

"We played half the game with 14 players," Jones said.

"They scored two tries out wide with an overlap because we were a player short."

Despite the loss, errors and penalties, it wasn't all doom and gloom.

Jones found plenty of positives in the game.

"We are not far off the money, they are the top side and we matched them," he said.

"We matched them, I thought there were parts of the game where we were the better side.

"Our scrums, we dominated them in the scrums again.

"Line outs were reasonably good.

"Our tight five; front row, second row, had very strong games across the board, particularly the front row, they really stood up."

The Bees have another home clash at Federation Park this Saturday against Ballina. Jones admitted he doesn't know too much about their coming opponents but is still expecting a physical contest.

"They are a real unknown quantity," he said.

They haven't been winning a lot of games but they haven't been losing by much.

"They have got a big forward pack with plenty of experience.

"We haven't seen them so I don't really know how they are going to travel up here."