Stingless Bees

Quick Facts

Name: Stingless Bees

Diet: Most species - pollen and nectar occasionally supplemented with rotten fruit, muddy water, etc. Three specialised species feed on carrion (rotten meat)

Behaviour: Eusocial and diurnal

Lifespan: Ranges depending on species, sex, and role of bee

Workers ~ one month

Reproductive workers ~ several months

Queen ~ up to several years in some species

Size: Around 1cm in length for the larger species and 0.4cm for the smaller

Habitat/Range: Subtropical and tropical habitats around the world, including rainforests and savannahs

Threats: Habitat loss, agrochemicals, competition for resources, climate change and invasive species (including pathogens)

Conservation Status: Populations are thought to be at risk globally

Names & Nicknames: Stingless bees, stingless honey bees, meliponies

Size: All in all, stingless bees are pretty small, ranging from 0.4cm in some species to a whopping centimetre in others, about the size of your fingernail.

Smell: We're not the only ones partial to a spritz of perfume; stingless bees create their favourite fragrances from the smelly resins trees produce. They'll smear the sticky resin as a defence secretion, helping the bees ward off any potential predators. But the plot, or resin, thickens. Different species of stingless baes can isolate different compounds from the resins, leading to different smells. (Some master perfumer energy right there.) Apparently this can help the bees identify their fellow hive members – just like you can pick out a friend based on their scent.

Communication: Stingless bees are eusocial, meaning they live together in a highly cooperative group. Most individuals are non-breeding, except for a few males and the literal queen bee. It takes good communication to live like this, so stingless bees have various ways to get their intentions across. Scent plays a big role in the bee world, being used to tell each other apart and to lead their fellow bees to food sources. Vibrations or ‘buzzes’ are also used extensively, for example, when guarding the nest to alert other bees to incoming threats.

Favourite Hangout: Do these bees value their year-round tan? You'd be forgiven for thinking so – they're only found in the tropical and subtropical areas of the world. (Can you blame them?) The greatest concentration of stingless bee species is in the Neotropics, or Central and South America.

Favourite Snack: Most species very much stay in their bee lane, feeding on nectar and pollen with the occasional slurp of rotten fruit or a muddy bit of water. Some species even love a tasty slurp of the salty sweat and tears from large mammals, including humans! And crazier still, three South American species, known as vulture bees, have acquired a taste for rotten meat… read on if you want all the gory details!

Eating Habits: Like other social bees, most species of stingless bees forage for pollen and nectar to bring back to feed the rest of the colony. However, we will focus on a few more interesting species of stingless bees, the Vulture bees. Trigona crassipes, Trigona necrophaga, and Trigona hypogea are three species of stingless bee found in the tropical forests of Central and South America known as vulture bees, thanks to their preference for rotten flesh. These bees use their keen sense of smell to find a nice rotting corpse of some unfortunate animal. They aren't strong enough to chew through thick skin, so instead, they make their way through a natural opening, like a decomposing eye or a nostril. Once inside, they'll salivate on the meat before slurping it up, and special gut bacteria help them to digest the flesh. Once they return to the nest, they can regurgitate the meat milkshake to store it, feed the colony, or mix it with honey to create nutritious food for their larvae. Dinner is served.

Toilet Humour: Stingless bees are close relatives of the perhaps better-known honeybees. However, they do have their differences, including when it comes to their... toilet habits. Whereas honeybees will do their business outside, stingless bees prefer to keep things in-house, using a part of their hive as their communal toilet. After being stored for a while, they dispose of the waste outside of the hives!

Love Language: Courtship and lovemaking are things that only a few very select stingless bees will actually experience. Being eusocial, most bees do not reproduce, and that business is usually left to just one lucky male and, of course, the queen. The life of being a queen can be a cruel one, however. When a current queen is nearing the end of her lifespan, workers will start preparing for her to give birth to some potential successor virgin queens. If they don't think the current queen is nearing the end of her life quickly enough, they might speed things along by clipping off one of her legs. When a virgin queen is born, she'll take to the air to find a dashing male drone bee to mate with. Most stingless bee species only mate with one male, compared to honey bees that mate with multiple. If a new queen does end up mating with multiple, there's a higher chance she won’t be accepted by the hive and will be, quite unceremoniously, executed.

If you see them: A STINGLESS bee, wow, it's a miracle! No more fear of a nasty sting. Well, not quite, unfortunately; although they are indeed stingless, some species have a beefy pair of mandibles (insect jaws) and can give a nasty bite. And they can be pretty persistent, with evidence from stingless bees in Brazil showing they'll keep biting and biting even if it means sacrificing their lives to protect their colonies. So, as with all wildlife, we recommend giving them plenty of space and respect.

Red Flags: Some major ones include habitat loss, agrochemicals, competition for resources, climate change, and invasive species, including pathogens (diseases). There are of course more local threats affecting different species, for example, stingless bee species in the Amazon often have their whole nests destroyed by human honey gatherers.

Epic Journeys: The bigger the trip, the better the reward. Stingless bees live together socially in a colony, and it's the worker bees, a group of non-reproducing females that make up most of the inhabitants; their job is to go out searching for food sources and to bring snacks back for the others. Some workers gather from nearby, and others are a little more adventurous, flying over 2km to get to the juiciest food!

Glow-up: Stingless bees enter this world in a way we would all like to – in their own little room surrounded by as much food as they could possibly want. The length of the glow-up depends on the species. Over the next couple of weeks or so, they'll undergo multiple moults, feeding constantly until they're ready to emerge from their cell and enter the colony's world.

Facts: When it comes to honey, most people's minds go to honey bees. However, many stingless bee species, including the meat-loving vulture bees, make their own sweet loot, which people have harvested for thousands of years in some areas of the world, such as the Amazon. Stingless bees produce honey that is healthier than that of the honey bees and is packed full of a rare sugar called trehalulose, which is full of sweetness whilst not rotting your teeth! But more importantly than sorting out a sweet tooth, stingless bee honey has been used by local communities in the Amazon for generations thanks to its range of antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and wound-healing properties. It's no wonder that stingless bee honey is sometimes known as a ‘miracle liquid’.

Who are they in the friendship group: The one with unmatched loyalty, always ready to die for their queen.

How threatened are they: Not comprehensively assessed, but stingless bee populations in general are thought to be under threat