STINGLESS BEES!

                               STINGLESS BEES!

THINK Of bees and painful stings come to mind. But there are bees that are stingless too. The sting is there but remains non functional. The bees bite with their mandibles, but the bite intensity is just like that of an ant.

          Stingless bees are small in size and are also called ‘dammer bees’ or ‘mosquito bees’ Stingless bees have also been kept for centuries in various parts of the world, Stingless bees prefer to build their nests in stem and branches of living trees, old and abandoned ant hills, wooden dead logs, cracks in walls of houses, etc. Large cavities are delimited by walls of resin or batumen (mixture of wax, resin and mud, and sometimes pieces of plants).

          While honey bees always construct vertical combs, stingless bees live with horizontal combs. The entrance of the nest is habitually reduced, so that it can be protected against ants and other natural enemies. The nest comprised brood cells, honey and pollen cells. The brood chamber is surrounded by a protective wall made with wax and propolis called as ‘involucrum’ outside the involucrum, the bees build soft wax pots for pollen and honey. These pots can be from five to forty millimeters high.

          Stingless bees often visit trees that secrete resin from recent wounds, because they need a lot of resin for building their homes. Some species keep stores of wax and propolis ready for use. In honey bees a single queen mates with more number of males, but in stingless bees the queen mates with only one male. In stingless bees, there can be two or more queens laying eggs in the same nest. New queens are produced regularly, but most of them are killed and never endorsed to produce eggs.

          In honey bees nurse bees feed the growing larvae. Stingless bees have a system called mass-provisioning. In this food is deposited in the brood cell. The queen says egg on top of the food. After pupation, the adult bees emerge from the sealed brood cell. Beekeeping with the stingless bee is known as meliponicuture which is done to extract honey and waxy materials. Water content of the honey is more as compared to European honey bees, thus liable to ferment quickly, however, the honey fetches good market price because of its medicinal values. The stingless honey is rich in flavonoids. Researchers have highlighted the antimicrobial, anticataract properties of the stingless bee honey.

          In India, the practice of meliponicuture with Trigona sp. Is present in Karnataka and Kerala. Some tribes of western parts of India also indulge in stingless bee rearing and hunting. The Kaani tribes residing in the Karayar area of Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger reserve are rearing the Trigona bees in splitted bamboo poles.