Characteristics and Habitat of Stingless Bees
Contents
1) Stingless bees and their habitats.
2) Characteristics of stingless bees
3) Similarities with honeybees.
4) How to identify colonies of stingless bees
5) Should you keep the stingless bees?
Stingless bees and their habitats
Africa, Australia, Central and South America, as well as other tropical and subtropical regions of the planet are home to stingless bees. It is believed that stingless bees are indigenous in Africa and Asia. Stingless bees are thought to be native to Asia and Africa. There are different species of stingless bees that have certain environments and climatic conditions that they prefer to live in. This implies that each species of stingless bee has specific requirements for their habitat, such as temperature, humidity, type of vegetation, and other ecological factors, which are essential for their survival and reproduction. Therefore, understanding the preferred environments and climatic conditions of stingless bee species is crucial for their conservation and management, as well as for maintaining healthy ecosystems. Certain species can be found in tropical forests, savannahs, and sections of savannah that transition from forest to vegetation. Their pantropical distribution in tropical America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Australia suggests that the Meliponini originated on the old continent of Gondwana more than 100 million years ago. Nowadays, the Neotropics are home to the vast majority of stingless bee species, which exhibit an astonishing taxonomic diversity.
Characteristics of stingless bees
Due to their practical and cultural significance, stingless bees are a diverse collection of social insects that have been extensively investigated from an ethnobiological standpoint. The following points describe their characteristic:
• Their little bodies are useful for getting to flowers, especially those that are narrow and small.
• Since stingless bees are true generalists, they will visit any open flowers and do not occasionally make plant-specific decisions like honeybees do.
• Stingless bees also have the benefit of not stinging, making it possible to keep them on farms close to residential areas without encountering any issues.
• If the correct circumstances are present, stingless bees also value permanence, which means that they won’t quit their colony as frequently as honeybees do, giving farmers the assurance of year-round pollination.
• Only Apis honey bees are at risk from the varroa mite; it only reproduces in their hives and does not attack other bee species. Its biology has been carefully adapted to its host. Due of their very different nesting habits, local stingless bees are very unlikely to become its new primary host.
• Stingless bees create spherical pot-like structures formed of plant resin that are positioned next to one other and bundled into an asymmetrical circular structure, in contrast to honeybee colonies’ hexagonal combs, which are used to store honey and nurture young bees (brood).
• A spiral or tiered brood is created by stacking each circular level on top of the one before it.
Credit to: “Tetragonula Carbonaria Brood Structure” by Queenzlander CC BY-SA 4.0
Similarities with honeybees
They utilise these to raise their young. Like honeybees, stingless bees have a single reproductive queen. In pots that stingless bee workers had already filled with food suspensions, she deposits her eggs. As a result, the eggs hatch while they are suspended, and the newly born larvae eat the food. On either side of the brood are honeypots that are greater in size and supported by batumen, which the bees utilise to seal the hive’s contents from the outside environment.
Beekeepers should be careful when moving the hives so as not to drown developing larvae in the food suspension due to the peculiar food supply provided by the stingless bees.
How to identify colonies of stingless bees
Even though they are small, stingless bees are frequent visitors to our farms and home areas, and you may have mistaken them for winged ants. This is several tips; how can you recognise a colony of stingless bees:
• Hive entrance: Stingless bees are superior builders to other members of the family and even have resin-covered hive entrances. A projecting cylindrical, primarily light-colored hive aperture, whether it be underground, on a tree trunk, or inside your wall, is the first indication of stingless bee tenancy. Species to species can differ in the structure of these apertures.
• Activities around the hive entrance: you’ve got an excellent colony if you notice members entering, exiting, or flying around the opening. This is due to the fact that an active hive will always have foragers moving around in search of food, while others will be patrolling the entrance and keeping an eye out for intruders like other insects (wasps or black soldier fly are the worst), small animals like geckos, ants, and even people who are collecting honey. Despite not having stingers, stingless bees nevertheless bite.
Should you keep the stingless bees?
You must give stingless bees conditions that are relatively comparable to those they experienced in their colonies in order to successfully adopt them. Nevertheless, each colony could be relocated within a log or wooden hive. The use of eduction technique can accomplish this. It is imperative that the new Hive box be built in a way that takes into account the individuality of the entire colony.
Therefore, moving a stingless beehive from its original location to a new one is a labor-intensive and high-risk task. It is best to leave them alone if they are not causing a problem and to only grow flowering plants 500 metres away from the hives in order to keep the colonies healthy all year long. You could build a hive and put it nearby so that the workers can locate it and use it as their new home as large colonies will ultimately branch out (swarming process).
Studies have shown that stingless bee honey differs from Apis mellifera honey in that it has a higher moisture content, more acidity, a somewhat lower level of total carbs, and higher levels of antioxidant and biological activity.
Bibliography
- Hrncir, M., Jarau, S. & Barth, F.G. Stingless bees (Meliponini): senses and behavior. J Comp Physiol A 202, 597–601 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-016-1117-9.
- Zamudio, F., Hilgert, N.I. Descriptive attributes used in the characterization of stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) in rural populations of the Atlantic forest (Misiones-Argentina). J Ethnobiology Ethnomedicine 8, 9 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-8-9.
- The organic farmer, Issue 207, October 2022.
- Kofi, Kwapong & K, Aidoo & Combey, Rofela & Karikari, Afia. (2010). Stingless Bees: Importance, Management and Utilisation: A Training Manual for Stingless Bee Keeping.