Bees as pollinators in Brazil - USP

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advances in management, nutrition, pathology
and mechanization, especially for transport
to pollination sites. Farmers need to be made
aware of the benefits of incorporating pollination
into their management practices
Brazil has only seven species of bumblebees
(Bombus); nevertheless they are abundant
all over the country. They are generally
very aggressive, and are not reared for pollination
purposes in Brazil. The carpenter bee,
Xylocopa, can be reared and is a good pollinator
of passion fruit, among other crops. There
are 49 species of carpenter bees in Brazil
(Silveira, et al., 2002) that are potentially
important in agriculture. The solitary bees
management group did a very comprehensive
report, presented the main plants that should
benefit from their use as pollinators and the
needs for breeding them in large quantities.
An effort for a workshop focusing only on
these bees as pollinators was indicated as a
need, and was held in April 2004.
Stingless bees are native in Brazil, with
more than 500 species in the country.
Breeding techniques are known for some
species. Most stingless bees species have not
been studied yet. Their use as pollinators is
effective for some species (see Heard, 1999;
Malagodi-Braga, et al., 2000), but they are not
bred on a large scale to be available for agricultural
purposes. They have a high potential
for the use as pollinators: they are diverse,
have perennial nests, are generalists, but also
show floral preferences (Ramalho, et al., 1990;
Biesmeijer, et al., 2005), they communicate floral
resources to nestmates, they do not sting,
and they store food inside the nests. The use
and conservation of stingless bees was discussed
by this group, and next steps for related
activities suggested.
It is important to point out that if funding
is not available to develop bee biology projects
and to improve the local knowledge and for
capacity building concerning the other bee
species, Africanized honey bees will soon be
the only available pollinators in sufficient
quantity for agricultural use in our country.
Loss of habitat and increasingly intense agricultural
practices are clearly reducing the
native bee populations. Introduced into the
Americas, honey bees are generalists and in
most cases less effective for biodiversity conservancy.
The result will be a drastic loss in
plant biodiversity and in agricultural production,
especially in the more tropical regions.
Information Technology and
the Pollinators Initiatives
For this one-day workshop, held during the
last day of the SP+5 Forum, speakers representing
the various Pollinators Initiatives present
were invited. Other presentations focused
on local initiatives: the Brazilian Pollinators
Initiative and local projects that make a strong
use of Information Technology (IT) and are
related to pollinators. The speakers were asked
to give a short presentation focusing on how
IT is used presently and how, in their own
point of view, it might contribute for the
advancement of the national, regional and
international Pollinators Initiatives. Some time
was allowed for discussions on issues such as
technology and data sharing, systems integration
and also funding needs and strategies.
Workshop results, as well as the oral presentations,
are on line at http://www.webbee.org.br.