Stingless bee

The stingless bees belong to the tribe Meliponini (usually called the stingless honeybee) in the family Apidae, which also comprise the common honeybees, carpenter bees, orchid bees and bumblebees.

Stingless bees can be found in most tropical or subtropical regions of the world, such as Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia, and parts of Mexico and Brazil. Unlike in other parts of the world, most native eusocial bees of Central and South America are stingless bees, although only a few of them produce honey on a scale such that they are used regularly for this purpose by humans; they are also quite diverse in Africa, but are evidently not used by humans there.

Being tropical, stingless bees are active all year round, although they are less active in cooler weather. Unlike other bees, they do not sting but will defend by biting if their nest is disturbed, and also by pulling hairs; a few (in the genus Oxytrigona) have mandibular secretions that cause painful blisters. Stingless bees are eusocial bees that may have very large colonies (below), so the nest defenses may be formidable despite the lack of a sting.

Stingless bees of Australia

Of the 1600 species of wild bees native to Australia, 15 species are Meliponines. Stingless bees are also known as Australian native honey bees, native bees, sugar-bag bees and sweet bees. They are small, black in colour, with hairy extended hind legs for carrying nectar and pollen; because of this they are often mistaken for the bumblebee. The various stingless species look quite similar, with the two most common species, Trigona carbonaria and Austroplebeia australis, displaying the greatest variation, as the latter is smaller and less active. Both of these are often found in the area around Brisbane.

Stingless bees usually nest in hollow trunks and branches of trees or rock crevices, but they have also been encountered in wall cavities, old rubbish bins, water meters, and 55-gallon drums. Many beekeepers keep the bees in their original log hive or transfer them to a wooden box, as this makes it easier to control the hive.

As stingless bees are harmless to humans, they have become an increasingly attractive addition to the suburban backyard. Most stingless beekeepers do not keep the bees for honey; rather, they enjoy the sense of conserving a native species whose original habitat is declining due to human development. In return, the bees pollinate crops, garden flowers, and bushland during their search for nectar and pollen.

While a number of beekeepers fill a small niche market for bush honey, stingless native bees only produce quite small amounts and the structure of their hives makes the honey difficult to extract. It is only in warm areas of Australia, such as Queensland and northern New South Wales, that the bees can produce more honey than they need for their own survival. Harvesting honey from a nest in a cooler area could weaken or even kill the nest.

Hives

The bees store pollen and honey in large egg-shaped pots made of beeswax, typically mixed with various types of plant resin (sometimes called "propolis"). These pots are often arranged around a central set of horizontal brood combs, where the larval bees are housed. When the young worker bees emerge from their cells, they tend to remain inside the hive, pursuing different jobs. As workers get older, they become guards or foragers. Unlike in honeybees, larvae are not fed directly, but the pollen and nectar is placed in a cell, an egg is laid, and the cell is sealed until the adult bee emerges after pupation ("mass provisioning"). At any one time, hives can contain anywhere from 300-80,000 workers, depending on species.

In a simplified sense, the sex of each bee depends on the number of chromosomes it receives. Female bees have two sets of chromosomes (diploid) - one set from the queen and another from one of the male bees or drones. Drones have only one set of chromosomes (haploid), and are the result of unfertilized eggs, though inbreeding can result in diploid drones.

Unlike true honeybees, where female bees may become workers or queens depending on what kind of food they receive as larvae (queens are fed royal jelly and workers are fed pollen), the caste system in Meliponines is variable, and commonly based simply on the amount of pollen consumed, with larger amounts of pollen yielding queens; in the genus Melipona, however, there is also a genetic component, and as much as 25% of the female brood may be queens. Queen cells in the former case can be distinguished from others by their larger size, as they are stocked with more pollen, but in the latter case, the cells are identical to worker cells, and scattered among the worker brood. When the new queens emerge, they typically leave to mate, and most die. New nests are not established via swarms, but by a procession of workers who gradually construct a new nest at a secondary location, which is then joined by a newly-mated queen, at which point many workers take up permanent residence and help the new queen raise her own workers. If a ruling queen is herself weak or dying, then a new queen can replace her.

Honey production

In warm areas of Australia, these bees can be used for minor honey production. They also can be kept successfully in boxes in these areas. Special methods are being developed to harvest moderate amounts of honey from stingless bees in these areas without harming the bees.

Like the European honeybee (Apis mellifera), which provides most of Australia's commercially-produced honey, stingless bees have enlarged areas on their back legs for carrying pollen back to the hive. After a foraging expedition, these pollen baskets or corbiculae can be seen stuffed full of bright orange or yellow pollen. Stingless bees also collect nectar, which they store in an extension of their gut called a crop. Back at the hive, the bees ripen or dehydrate the nectar droplets by spinning them inside their mouthparts until honey is formed. Ripening concentrates the nectar and increases the sugar content, though it is not nearly as concentrated as the honey from true honeybees, and is much thinner in consistency, and more prone to spoiling.

Stingless bees store their aromatic honey in clusters of small resin pots near the extremities of the nest. For honey production, the bees need to be kept in a specially-designed box so that the honey stores can be reached without damaging the rest of the nest structure. Some recent box designs for honey production provide a separate compartment for the honey stores so that honey pots can be removed without spilling honey into other areas of the nest.

Unlike a hive of commercial honeybees, which can produce 75 kilograms of honey a year, a hive of stingless bees produces less than one kilogram. Stingless bee honey has a distinctive "bush" taste - a mix of sweet and sour with a hint of lemon. The taste comes from plant resins - which the bees use to build their hives and honey pots - and varies depending on the flowers and trees visited.

Pollination

Australian farmers rely heavily on the introduced commercial bee to pollinate their crops. However, for some crops native bees may be better pollinators. Stingless bees have been shown to be valuable pollinators of crops such as macadamias and mangos. They may also benefit strawberries, watermelons, citrus, avocados, lychees and many others. Research into the use of stingless bees for crop pollination in Australia is still in its very early stages, but these bees show great potential. Recent studies at the University of Western Sydney (see Aussie Bee, Issue 10) have shown these bees' excellent ability to work in confined areas such as glasshouses.

Other types of Australian native bees may also prove to be great pollinators. Native carpenter bees, teddy bear bees and blue banded bees can perform a special type of pollination called buzz pollination, which Apis mellifera rarely performs. This could make them ideal pollinators of crops such as tomatoes, kiwi fruit, eggplants, blueberries, cranberries, and chilli peppers.

Mayan stingless bees of Central America

The stingless bees Melipona beecheii and M. yucatanica are the only native bees cultured to any degree in the Americas. They were extensively cultured by the Mayan tribes for honey, and regarded as sacred. These bees are endangered due to massive deforestation, altered agricultural practices (especially insecticides), and changing beekeeping practices with the arrival of the Africanized honeybee, which produces much greater honey crops.

History

Native stingless bees (Melipona beecheii being the favorite) have been kept by the lowland Maya for thousands of years. The traditional Mayan name for this bee is Xunan kab, literally meaning "royal lady". The bees were once the subject of religious ceremonies and were a symbol of the bee-god Ah Muzen Cab, who is known from the Madrid Codex.

The bees were, and still are, treated as pets. Families would have one or many log-hives hanging in and around their house. Although they are stingless, the bees do bite and can leave welts similar to a mosquito bite. The traditional way to gather bees, still favored amongst the locals, is to find a wild hive; then the branch is cut around the hive to create a portable log, enclosing the colony. This log is then capped on both ends with another piece of wood or pottery and sealed with mud. This clever method keeps the melipine bees from mixing their brood, pollen, and honey in the same comb as the European bees. The brood is kept in the middle of the hive, and the honey is stored in vertical "pots" on the outer edges of the hive. A temporary, replaceable cap at the end of the log allows for easy access to the honey while doing minimal damage to the hive. However, inexperienced handlers can still do irreversible damage to a hive, causing the hive to swarm and abscond from the log. On the other hand, with proper maintenance, hives have been recorded as lasting over 80 years, being passed down through generations. In the archaeological record of Mesoamerica, stone discs have been found which are generally considered to be the caps of long-disintegrated logs which once housed the beehives.

Tulum

Tulum, the site of an ancient Mayan city on the Caribbean coast 130 km south of Cancun, has a god depicted repeatedly all over the site. Upside down, he appears as a small figure over many doorways and entrances. One of the temples, the "Templo del Dios Descendente" or the Temple of the Descending God, stands just left of the central plaza. Speculation is that he may be the "Bee God", Ah Muzen Cab, as seen in the Madrid Codex. It is possible that this was a religious/trade center with emphasis on Xunan kab, the "royal lady".

Economic products from beekeeping

Balché, an alcohol beverage similar to mead, was made from fermented honey and the bark of the Balché tree, hence its name. It was traditionally brewed in a canoe. The drink was known to have entheogenic properties, and was consumed in medicinal and ritual practices. The hallucinogenic properties come from the alkaloid bark of the leguminous Balché tree (Lonchocarpus violaceus), although whether the hallucinogens came from the bark or the honey, which beekeepers would harvest after placing the nests near the trees, remains uncertain. Toxic and hallucinogenic substances can be found in honey if bees collect nectar and pollen from certain types of vegetation. Most likely, it is a combination of the two, since balché is made from both the Melipona honey from the Balché flowers, and the bark of the tree, brewed and fermented together.

Lost wax casting, a common metalworking method which is typically found where the inhabitants keep bees, was also utilized by the Maya. The wax from Melipona is soft and easy to work, especially in the humid Mayan lowland areas. This allowed the Maya to create smaller works of art, jewelry, and other metalsmithing that would be difficult to forge. It also makes use of the leftovers from honey extraction. If the hive was damaged beyond repair, the whole of the comb could be used, thus using all of the hive. With experienced keepers, though, only the honey pot could be removed, the honey extracted, and the wax used for casting or other purposes.

Future

The outlook for stingless bees is grim. The number of active Melipona beekeepers is rapidly declining in favor of the more economical, non-indigenous Africanized Apis mellifera. The high honey yield, 100 kilograms or more annually, along with the ease of hive care and ability to create new hives from existing stock, commonly outweighs the negative consequences of "killer bee" hive maintenance. Furthermore, there are flora that the Africanized honeybees do not visit, such as those in the tomato family, and several forest trees and shrubs, which rely on the native stingless bees for pollination. There has already been a decline in native populations of flora in areas where stingless bees have been displaced by Africanized honeybees. An additional blow to the art of stingless beekeeping is that many of the stingless beekeepers are now elderly men and women, whose hives may not be cared for once they die. The hives are considered similar to an old family collection, to be parted out once the collector dies. In fact, a survey of a once-popular area of the Mayan lowlands shows the rapid decline of beekeepers, down to around 70 in 2004 from thousands in the late 1980s. There are conservation efforts underway in several parts of Mesoamerica. A comprehensive conservation guide can be found in the June 2005 issue of Bee World.