A recent article found that Cuba also has the largest populations of Melipona in the wild.īarrett tells the story of her sole day off while visiting Cuba. It's not just cultivated populations of Melipona that are thriving either. Interest in Melipona has grown so much on the island that in 2017, the Cuban Society of Beekeepers altered its name to the Cuban Society of Beekeepers and Meliponiculturists as a way to demonstrate the importance of the Melipona to the island. The Salt Native Bees And Alfalfa Farmers - A Seedy Love Story ![]() Working with veterinary professor Jose Machado at Cuba's University of Cienfuegos, Barrett is advising a student how to set up hives for agriculture research while working on getting permits to collect the DNA samples necessary for her genetic research. She's trying to answer these questions of origin as well as study the DNA of the Melipona. In fact, Barrett recently visited the Caribbean island to lay the groundwork for future research. Scientists still aren't sure when the bees arrived in Cuba or how they got there. "A lot of the beekeepers are aging males and as they die off or choose not to pass it along to their children or relatives, the art of Mayan bee craft dies off," Buchmann says.īut a seaward voyage might prove to be the Melipona's saving grace. In a Melipona beecheii hive in Cienfuegos, Cuba, bees are completing their tasks, which range from returning pollen and nectar to the hive to nursing new bees.Ī shrinking habitat usually spells the end for a niche species like Melipona, and the ancient practice of Mayan beekeeping is also fading away. Steve Buchmann, a pollination ecologist at the University of Arizona, says that the stingless bee only produces about one to two liters of honey per hive a year (compared to about 70 liters from a typical honeybee), but that small volume can be worth about $30 a liter, if not more. Sugarcane is faster and easier to grow than tending jobones, and produces a much larger yield. Only the arrival of sugarcane, brought by Europeans in the 16 th century, supplanted the culinary use of honey. Melipona honey was the primary sweetener in food. The native peoples of the Yucatan practiced bee husbandry for thousands of years. ![]() It's very delicious, but much smaller amounts of it, so you need a lot more bees." "It's much tastier honey," says Drexel University entomologist Meghan Barrett. Roubik describes it as having more of a citrus flavor than commercial honey, with a longer aftertaste. Instead, "They have storage pots that are squished and left to drain into some basin." Although the bees do not sting, they will bite to protect their hives.īut the biggest difference between Melipona and European honeybees is the honey they produce. "They don't have frames or vertical comb," says evolutionary ecologist David Roubik the "bee man" of the Smithsonian Institution. The Salt Honeybees Help Farmers, But They Don't Help The Environment
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