let’s Talk Honey

In some tropical regions of Africa, Australia, and the Americas, native stingless bees are kept for honey production. In Asia several species of Apis are utilized by people. But the western honey Bee, Apis mellifera, is the most common bee kept for honey and pollination around the world. Originating in Africa, the western honey bee spread across the entire continent and into Europe and the Middle East, occupying environmental niches. Over centuries in isolation, distinct races, or sub-species, of Apis mellifera adapted to specific regions and climates, and acquired recognizable differences in behavior, appearance, and disposition.

While about 20,000 species of bees exist, only eight species of honey bee are recognized:

Apis andreniformis (the black dwarf honey bee)
Apis cerana (the eastern honey bee)
Apis dorsata (the giant honey bee)
Apis florea (the red dwarf honey bee)
Apis koschevnikovi (Koschevnikov's honey bee)
Apis laboriosa (the Himalayan giant honey bee)
Apis mellifera (the western honey bee)
Apis nigrocincta (the Philippine honey bee)

Stingless Honey bees

Stingless bees, sometimes called stingless honey bees, are a large group of bees, about 550 described species, comprising the tribe Meliponini.

In 2020 researchers at the University of Queensland found that some species of stingless bee in Australia, Malaysia, and Brazil produce honey that has trehalulose — a sugar with a low glycaemic index, rather than the usual glucose and fructose. This honey is helpful for health because blood sugar level does not rise quickly. The university's findings supported the long-standing claims of Indigenous Australian people that native honey is beneficial for human health.

Stingless Honeybees of Australia

In warm areas of Australia, these bees can be used for minor honey production. Special methods are being developed to harvest moderate amounts of honey from stingless bees in these areas without causing harm.

Like the European honey bee, 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 honey bees; it is much thinner in consistency, and more prone to spoiling. Unlike a hive of commercial honeybees, which can produce 75 kg (165 lbs) of honey a year, a hive of Australian stingless bees produces less than 1 kg (2 lbs). Stingless bee honey has a distinctive "bush" taste — a mix of sweet and sour with a hint of fruit. The taste comes from plant resins — which the bees use to build their hives and honey pots — and varies at different times of year depending on the flowers and trees visited.

Stingless Honeybees of Brazil

Brazil is home to several species of stingless bees. Although the colony sizes of most of these bees are much smaller than those of the European honey bee, the per-bee productivity can be quite high, with colonies containing fewer than a thousand bees being able to produce up to 4 liters of honey every year. Probably the world champion in honey productivity, the manduri (Melipona marginal), lives in swarms with only about 300 individuals, but even so, it can produce up to 3 liters of honey a year in the right conditions.

Species of the genus Scaptotrigona have very large colonies, with up to 20,000 individuals, and can produce from 8 to 12 liters of honey a year, but they are somewhat aggressive and thus not popular among Brazilian meliponine beekeepers. Some large breeders have more than 3,000 hives of the tamer but still highly productive species in the genus Melipona, such as the tiúba, the true uruçu, and the jandaíra, each with 3,000 or more bees per colony. They can produce over 1.5 tons of honey every year. In large bee farms, only the availability of flowers limits the honey production per colony. Their honey is considered more palatable because it is not overly sweet, and it is also thought to have medicinal properties more pronounced than honey from bees of the genus Apis due to the higher level of antimicrobial substances.

Stingless Honeybees of Centeral America

The stingless bees Melipona beecheii and M. yucatanica are the primary native bees cultured by the Maya civilization for honey, and regarded as sacred. They continue to be cultivated by the modern Maya peoples, although these bees are endangered due to massive deforestation, altered agricultural practices (especially overuse of insecticides). Although these bees are endangered due to massive deforestation they continue to be cultivated by the modern Maya peoples.

Native meliponines have been kept by the lowland Maya for thousands of years. The Yucatec Maya language name for this bee is xunan kab, meaning "(royal, noble) lady bee". The bees were once the subject of religious ceremonies and were a symbol of the bee-god Ah-Muzen-Cab, known from the Madrid Codex.

Stingless Honeybees of Malaysia

Stingless bee is known as Kelulut in Malaysia and Tantadan (local Dusun name) in Sabah. Belong to the family Apida, kelulut is closely related to honey bees, and they are also the honey producer and important pollinators in tropical and subtropical regions. Stingless bees are very common in Sabah. If you have a garden or orchard, there is a 80% chance that you could spot a kelulut hive nearby. Usually they build their nests in hollow trunks, wall cavities, and even crevices in your house wall.

These stingless bees are only 1 centimetre or less in body length. Their tiny size allows them to access small flowers. Though they produce honey in small quantity, kelulut honey is more nutritious and highly priced. It is a trend that more and more Sabah village house farms kelulut, as the kelulut honey has good demand and can generate hundred to thousands dollars of easy side income every month.

Honey Bees in North America

"Save the Bees!" is a common refrain these days, and it's great to see people interested in the little animals critical for our food supply around the globe. But I have one quibble: you're talking about the wrong bees!

Honey bees are not native to North America. Originally imported from Europe in the 17th century, raised and managed by beekeepers in order to make honey or to pollinate crops like almonds. It's an agricultural animal, in the same way that sheep and cattle are.

While important in the pollination of some crops, honey bees are also significant competitors of native bees and should not be introduced in conservation areas, parks, or areas where you want to foster the conservation of native plants and native bees. When flowers are abundant, there is plenty of pollen for both honeybees and their wild cousins. But in many landscapes, or when an orchard stops blooming, farmed honeybees can compete with wild bees for food, making it harder for native species to survive.

Basically, a healthy environment needs (native) bees — but not honeybees. The way we're managing honeybees, in these hives, has nothing to do with nature conservation. Concern for honeybees helped more people understand why it's important to have more land covered with wildflowers and trees — and free from pesticides.