Stingless bees depend on forests for their survival. Their habitat has been reduced to small refuges that indigenous people and scientists are preserving.

Por Sally Jabiel (América Futura-El País)

One after another, the stingless bees return to the wooden box. Some bring pollen stuck to their hind legs, others nectar in their mouthparts. They enter the nest, disappear for a moment and emerge again. They are small, inconspicuous and unable to fly more than a few hundred meters. Meliponini depend on everything being close by. Their world is tied to the forest they have pollinated for millions of years.

But that world shrinks. To find them in Peru, you have to walk more than two hours through open fields and deforested land to reach the tallest trees. “The wild nests only resist where there is still virgin forest,” says Heriberto Vela, a 58-year-old meliponiculturist from San Francisco, a small indigenous community without roads or signal in Loreto, in the northern Amazon. On the banks of the Marañón River, the Kukama Kukamiria have built small wooden shrines. They take care of them to protect them from Apis mellifera, bees brought by the colonizers from Europe and spread throughout the continent, capable of thriving where the natives cannot. They care for them as a form of resistance.

Heiresses of the forest

“Sometimes I think about the years I wasted without studying these bees,” says César Delgado, an entomologist of Kukama Kukamiria origin and one of Peru’s leading experts on stingless bees. His eyes, intense and vibrant, are typical of someone who is dedicated to unraveling what others barely see. He has been working at the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute (IIAP) since 1997 and for the past decade has specialized in the Meliponini and their pollination patterns. “Their diversity is impressive, but we are far from fully understanding it.”

Of the 20,000 species of bees in the world, the Meliponini are one of the most numerous lineages, with more than 550 species. In Latin America, more than 400 of these stingless insects have been identified. In Peru, there are at least 175, although it is believed that there could be twice as many.

According to a book by Christoph Grüter, a researcher of social insects, the Meliponini have been evolving for more than 70 million years and coexisted with the dinosaurs, when they had already lost their functional sting. Long before the arrival of colonizers and the introduction of Apis mellifera in Peru in 1857, the indigenous peoples already knew these bees well: in which trees they nested, when to harvest their honey and how to use it. Their bond with these native bees is as ancient – and as spiritual – as with the forest itself. In both cases, their survival depends on the territory remaining standing.

They heal, pollinate and sustain the forest

Heriberto Vela met César Delgado in 2018, when he was a park ranger at the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in Loreto. At that time, he was taking care of three wild nests without much technical knowledge. But, little by little, he has been learning and now they work together in the family meliponarium in San Francisco, where Vela raises five species of stingless bees. One of the most popular is the Melipona eburnea, called the Kukama boca de sapo or ronsapilla.

Delgado checks one of the 46 breeding boxes and reveals a living architecture of honey, pollen and wax pots built by this robust, coppery-bodied species. “Each box is a small community that is better organized than we are,” explains Vela, who also cares for 40 wild nests in GPS-monitored trees.

“They don’t even realize I’m harvesting their honey,” he continues as he extracts an amber drop with a syringe. More liquid than that of Apis mellifera, its flavor reflects the landscape they pollinate: more citric, more herbal and less cloying. Vela explains that this honey has been food and medicine for wounds, infections and even colds among the Kukama.

This ancestral tradition has been supported by pioneering research by César Delgado and Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, a chemical biologist and founder of the NGO Amazon Research International. Their study confirmed that the honeys of Melipona eburnea and Tetragonisca angustula, another smaller species known as ramichi or angelita, contain medicinal molecules with anticancer, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties.

But their production is limited. While Apis mellifera produces between 20 and 30 liters of honey each year, native Apis mellifera produce between one and three liters. Until a few years ago, half a liter of their honey cost three dollars, explains Vásquez Espinoza. After the study, the price shot up to 20 dollars. Even so, it is still a niche product.

In addition to their medicinal value, these bees are also specialized pollinators of plants, which contributes to maintaining the genetic diversity of the forest. “They have established unique relationships with local plants,” explains Marilena Marconi, an Italian biologist who directed the experimental meliponarium at the Urku Center in San Martin, in Peru’s high jungle. “They pollinate the native crops they evolved with.”

Among the native fruits that benefit from this pollination is camu camu (Myrciaria dubia), whose production can increase by up to 44%. In the case of another commercial crop such as coffee, yields improve by 28%, according to Delgado’s studies. In other words, the Meliponini sustain the economies of those who cultivate the forest.

Beehives without forest

More than half of the stingless bee habitats in the Peruvian Amazon are in areas at high risk of deforestation, according to a recent study on Melipona eburnea and Tetragonisca angustula. This is the first scientific evidence directly linking forest loss to the decline of these bees in Peru.

“Some of the trees where they nest are heavily trafficked,” warns Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, author of the study with Delgado and other Asháninka researchers. “The cutter doesn’t see the hive, only the wood. He is not aware that he is also killing beehives and putting the ecosystem at risk.” For this National Geographic explorer, bees not only sustain the forest, they also embody a form of resistance of nature and the people who have protected it in the face of deforestation and climate change.

Meliponini nest in the longest-lived trees of the Amazon, such as the cumala (Virola albidiflora) and the tornillo (Cedrelinga cateniformis), one of the most felled species in the country, according to the study. In the dry forest, they prefer fig trees (Ficus insipida), carob trees (Ceratonia siliqua) and palo santo (Bursera graveolens), the latter classified as critically endangered by the Peruvian government. These trees are more than 100 years old. “And they are the first to disappear with deforestation,” Delgado laments. “Where is the bee going to live then?” he wonders.

To map what the indigenous peoples already sensed, the team visited four communities in the Asháninka Communal Reserve in the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro River Valley (VRAEM), one of the areas hardest hit by illegal coca cultivation in Peru. “We went at night to better hear their buzzing, measured the diameter of the tree and the humidity and height of the place,” says Richar Demetrio, Asháninka park ranger and co-author of the study. In this way they located half a hundred nests, many of them endangered. “In the Pitirinquini community, 90% is deforested,” he warns. “When they cut down a tree, the bees die.”

Deforestation is also occurring further north, in the dry forest of the Peruvian coast, where Ficus trees are being cut down for timber and Carob trees for firewood. “There aren’t many old trees left, the bees have no place to nest,” warns Ysabel Calderón, a biologist recognized with the Midori Biodiversity Award for restoring this mountain ecosystem. “We are losing them.”

A complementary analysis by Brazilian scientists Maria Eduarda Soares, Iago Junqueira and Weslley Cunha, who are part of the Serrapilheira Institute’training programs , reinforces this concern: deforestation in Peru is very intense in the areas most suitable for Tetragonisca angustula and Melipona eburnea. In the case of the latter, which is strongly linked to the forest, the pressure is particularly critical: 2.5 million hectares of its forests have already been cleared in the last decade.

According to the geospatial analysis, even in indigenous territories, where deterioration has been slower, there is a steady increase in deforestation. For scientists, protecting these territories is essential for the conservation of stingless bees.

Unequal competition

Deforestation turns the forest into a battlefield between bees. “When food is scarce, the strongest bee wins, the one that gets up the earliest,” says Guiomar Nates, an entomologist specializing in wild bees in Colombia. And Apis mellifera almost always wins.

The tiny wings of stingless bees prevent them from flying more than a few meters. In contrast, the invasive bee can travel about three kilometers. “If there are no flowers within those few meters, it’s a desert for them,” says Nates. “Even if there’s a lush garden a kilometer away, they can’t get there.” Tetragonisca angustula barely reaches 500 meters a day.

Colony size also plays a role. In Mexico, scientists have observed that Apis mellifera, with hives of 25,000 to 60,000 individuals, monopolize the flowers in times of scarcity, displacing the Meliponini that form colonies of 500 to 2,500 individuals. “At five in the morning, Apis mellifera is already visiting the most flowers,” says Ysabel Calderón, from her experience in the Peruvian dry forest. “When the native leaves at noon, there is nothing left.”

Uncontrolled meliponiculture

Until recently, stingless bees did not exist in Peruvian legislation. The law only recognized Apis mellifera and its agro-industrial value. “How could we help them if they weren’t even recognized?” questions Vásquez Espinoza about the work she initiated with Delgado, the NGO Earth Law Center and various indigenous meliponiculturists. “Our mission was to advocate with science and culture for their recognition.”

In December 2024, the Peruvian Congress amended the law to include stingless bees and promote the conservation of their habitats, reforestation of host trees and sustainable meliponiculture.

The change is part of a broader vision that seeks to declare stingless bees subjects of rights. “It is an ecocentric vision that recognizes nature for its own sake, beyond its usefulness to people. A vision that understands that the ecosystem needs the bees and vice versa,” summarizes Constanza Prieto Figelist, legal director for Latin America at Earth Law Center. “Indigenous peoples have always known this, and now science is providing the data to support regulatory changes.

Even so, international barriers persist. The Codex Alimentarius, the United Nations global standard, only recognizes honey produced by Apis mellifera. At the same time, commercial interest in Peru has triggered the extraction and trafficking of wild stingless bee nests. “I have been offered a lot of money to take them to Lima,” comments Ysabel Calderón. “It’s a risk if it’s not regulated.”

Illegal trafficking of Meliponini has been documented in Brazil, which, with decades of experience in meliponiculture, prohibits moving colonies between regions. “In Peru, anyone can go into the forest and take out the hives,” warns biologist Marinela Marconi. “And, in doing so, they move parasites and diseases that can alter entire ecosystems.”

For indigenous peoples, these bees are more than essential, they are sacred. In the Ashaninka cosmovision, the Meliponini were once people, says park ranger Richar Antonio Demetrio. But Avireri, the supreme god of nature, turned them into bees.

Since then, these small and fragile winged insects do an immense work. They pollinate flowers that without them would not sprout, they cure diseases with their honey, they sustain life. And, in each flight, they carry the living memory of the forest and of the people who, like them, have never ceased to care for and resist.

This story is the result of a collaboration between Latin American journalists and scientists, fostered by Instituto Serrapilheira of Brazil and the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), exploring together how damage to the Amazon’s biodiversity disrupts the various environmental services it provides to the continent.