🌿 Why We Fell in Love With Them

A Different World of Bees

Discovering the diversity and evolution of stingless bees

When people hear the word bee, the image that usually comes to mind is the familiar honey bee. It lives in large colonies, produces honey in recognizable combs and has become one of the most widely known insects in the world.

But honey bees represent only a small part of bee diversity.

Thousands of bee species exist worldwide, ranging from solitary species that never form large colonies to highly social bees whose entire lives depend on cooperation. Among them is a remarkable group found predominantly throughout tropical and subtropical regions: the stingless bees.

Stingless bees belong to the tribe Meliponini and occur naturally across Central and South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. More than 600 species have been described, and new information about their diversity, distribution and biology continues to emerge.

Their name describes one characteristic they share: although they possess the anatomical remains of a sting, it is strongly reduced and cannot function as the defensive weapon familiar from honey bees and many other social bees.

Beyond that similarity, however, there is enormous variation.

Some stingless bees are only a few millimetres long and can easily be overlooked while visiting a flower. Others are considerably larger. Their bodies may be black, brown, reddish or patterned with yellow and other markings. Some species form relatively small colonies, while others can maintain colonies containing thousands of individuals.

Their behaviour differs just as much.

Some species adapt relatively well to gardens, farms and settlements. Others depend much more strongly on forest environments. Nesting preferences vary, as do foraging distances, defensive strategies, communication systems and the resources colonies use.

Even their nest entrances can be distinctive enough to provide clues about the species living inside.

This diversity is the result of evolution acting across different environments over long periods of time.

A bee living in a humid tropical forest encounters different challenges from one inhabiting a seasonally dry landscape. Food availability changes differently through the year. Suitable nesting cavities differ. Predators, competitors, temperatures and rainfall patterns vary.

Over generations, natural selection shapes populations in response to these conditions.

The result is not one perfect stingless bee, but hundreds of different solutions to the same fundamental biological problems:

How do we find food?

Where do we build a nest?

How do we protect it?

How do we reproduce?

How do thousands of individuals live together successfully?

Their reduced sting offers a particularly clear example.

Losing the ability to deliver an effective sting did not leave stingless bees without protection. Different species developed other defensive strategies. Workers may bite intruders, attach themselves to hair or skin, use sticky plant resins or recruit nestmates when the colony is threatened.

Some species have workers that specialize in guarding the nest entrance. The architecture of the entrance itself can also restrict access and make the colony easier to defend.

Evolution did not remove defence.

It changed the way defence was achieved.

This is one reason stingless bees are so interesting biologically. Even within one group of closely related social insects, evolution has produced an impressive diversity of forms and behaviours.

It also teaches us to be careful when talking about them.

There is no single lifestyle that represents all stingless bees. A behaviour observed in one species should not automatically be assumed to occur in another. Species living on opposite sides of the world may share an evolutionary history while occupying very different ecological niches.

The deeper we enter their world, the more diversity we find.

And that diversity is exactly where their story begins.