Introduction to Stingless Bee Honey Keeping & The Future Prospects
Table of content
2) The importance of stingless bees.
3) The market values of stingless bees.
Introduction
When you ask people of bees, maybe the common thought will be that “bees defend themselves against predator with stings, better stay away from them?” But do you know that male bees (drone bees) do not have stingers. Malaysia’s native stingless bee or “Kelulut” reduced their defense by biting their predator and secrete sticky resin that makes your hairs stick together, generally they are harmless because they do not have stingers. In other places they are also called as Dammer/Dammar bees.
Malaysia have wonderful variety of stingless native bees, there are about 35 of stingless bees in Malaysia identified as at 1939. Efforts have been intensify to successfully extend the list to over 45 species by the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) in 2014. However, the reported stingless bees are still quite unknown to most people.
Stingless bees (Hymenoptera >> Apidae >> Meliponi) can be classified into 2 genera, namely, the Melipona and the Trigona. The figures below show the phenology of the stingless bees that can be traced back to the Hymnoptera phenology.
The table below shows the list of common stingless bee in Malaysia and neighboring areas that are farmed to produce honey. The references are provided based on their characteristics, behaviors, and geographical distributions
| No | Species name |
|---|---|
| 1 | Heterotrigona itama, 2 |
| 2 | Heterotrigona bakeri |
| 3 | Heterotrigona erythrogaster |
| 4 | Geniotrigona thoracica |
| 5 | Lepidotrigona terminata |
| 6 | Tetragonula fuscobalteata |
| 7 | Tetragonilla atripes |
| 8 | Tetragonula laeviceps |
| 9 | Lepidotrigona ventralis (Smith) |
| 10 | Tetrigona apicalis (Smith) |
| 11 | Tetrigona binghami (Schwarz) |
| 12 | Lophotrigona canifrons (Smith) |
| 13 | Homotrigina Fimbriata |
The Importance of Stingless Bee
Stingless bees are specialized bees that gather pollen to feed their younglings and also play an important role in the ecology, economy, and horticulture. Many natives (such as Cengal, Merbau, and Meranti) and cultivated tropical plants are dependent on stingless bees pollination where they have contributed forestry industry valued over RM 4bil. Furthermore, they are important pollinators of crops such as fruits, vegetable, fiber/forage crops, and garden flowers with annual contribution to the agriculture industry of RM 66mil. The diminutive size of the stingless bees also ensures pollination of small flowers.
The market values of stingless bees
Stingless bee’s products such as honey, pollen, and cerumen have been used as a source of income for generations. The market price of raw stingless bee is around RM120 per kg and is doubled after the process of reducing its water content to 22 %. The market of stingless bee is still far away from its full potential. However, before starting your own stingless bees business/farms, several issues must be understand like the sustainable methods of stingless bee farming, the struggles of combating the problems of adulteration, and how to increase the customers’ acceptance level of stingless bees honey especially at the international level.
Conclusion
Stingless bees farming is an infant industry in Malaysia, many had jump on the bandwagon to join because of the promise of lucrative outcome which quickly disappeared because of the fallacy of their ideas about profit making. Two standards of MS 2683:2017 and MS 2679:2017 for Kelulut (Stingless bee) honey- Specification and “Amalan Pertanian Baik (APB)- Pemeliharaan lebah (tribus Apini) dan kelulut (tribus Meliponini)”, respectively, were in place. These standards may be regarded as highly methodological where the current generation of stingless bees farmers are commonly focused more to practical aspects which do not compromise their lifestyles. Perhaps, the younger potential stingless bee farmers must be encouraged to join and they seemed to be the only one who truly cared about upholding the balance between profit and sustainability, no matter what the cost. We can learn from Maginnity that stingless bees can be a teaching tools in schools and moving the topics towards building a new generating who will preserve the population of stingless bees.
Bibliography
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