Identifying Species of Meliponines - Why It's Crucial

Last month we wrote about Beescape and the importance of this element in meliponiculture. This time, our post is focussed on the need for a meliponiculturist to be able to identify the different species of meliponines. Different species have different behaviours and different needs to survive and flourish, so it is of utmost importance to know the types of bees we are culturing.

To be really successful in meliponiculture, a serious meliponiculturist needs to be widely knowledgeble about the subject and everything related to it. In order to make the honey industry in Malaysia sustain in the long term and to achieve global acceptance of our products, we should aim to be real professionals in this field.

Without having the relevant knowledge, it would be impossible to maintain a consistent supply of good quality honey. Worse yet, mismanagement and poor management of meliponines will result in a decline in their population, not only reducing the production of honey but upsetting the very ecosystem that we survive on.

Many colonies, perhaps in the thousands by now, have been destroyed because people were ignorant about the species they were culturing and the types of trees and resins that are required by them. The species from the genus Tetrigona for example, have a unique hive building system, in that they require resin from Dipterocarp trees. The entrances, honey pots and pillars are hard and brittle, thus they are dubbed the crystal species. Many colonies of this genus have been removed from their natural habitat and carelessly an ignorantly cultured in a location void of any source of resin, resulting in the meliponines being forced to find alternative sources, failing which the colony will just collapse.

To love your bees is to know them.