POLLINATORS POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION

THE ASSESSMENT REPORT ON POLLINATORS, POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
developing countries, stingless beekeeping (also known
as meliponiculture), remains essentially informal, technical
knowledge is scarce, and management practices lack
standardization. Commercialized bee products, including
honey, colonies, and in a few cases crop pollination, are
generally unregulated, and demand often exceeds supply.
Meliponiculture thus remains a largely under-exploited
business (Jaffé et al., 2015).
2014). In Mexico, the stingless bee N. perilampoides was
tested for tomato pollination (Cauich et al., 2004). Similar
trends are observed in southern Asia (in India) and in South-
East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines),
where besides traditional stingless bee honey production
(Kahono, 2011; Kumar et al., 2012), management for
pollination is beginning to take root (Cortopassi-Laurino et
al., 2006).
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2. DRIVERS OF CHANGE OF POLLINATORS,
POLLINATION NETWORKS AND POLLINATION
In most African countries stingless bees are hunted for
their honey instead of being managed, which can lead to
the destruction of wild colonies however, meliponiculture
does exist in Tanzania and Angola (Cortopassi-Laurino et
al., 2006, Jaffé et al., 2015). While in e.g. Ghana (Kwapong
et al., 2010) and Kenya (Macharia et al., 2007) an interest
to develop stingless bee management has been identified.
In Australia management practices were developed to
provide pollination with stingless bees for agricultural
crops (Heard and Dollin, 2000). Stingless bees were found
to be as often managed for pollination purposes as for
honey production, already at the end of the last century
according to the survey conducted by Heard and Dollin
(2000). They found that the most common species kept
in Australia are Trigona carbonaria (69%) and T. hockingsi
(20%). Stingless bees in Australia are used and promoted
mostly for macadamia nut, orchards (Heard and Dollin,
2000), mango and watermelon pollination (Dollin, 2014).
In Central and South America stingless bees are usually
used for honey, propolis and wax production used for
medicinal and ritual purposes, however, their role in crop
pollination is being more often investigated (Cortopassi-
Laurino et al., 2006). Meliponiculture in these countries
can take various forms and use different traditional and
modern techniques or types of hives depending on the
target bee species (Cortopassi-Laurino et al., 2006).
Stingless bee honey producers can be well organized, e.g.
in Brazil a private virtual initiative was created to connect
stingless beekeepers to exchange experiences, buy and
sell products and acquire know-how. In Mexico, some
species are actively managed in rural areas (Sommeijer,
1999; Quezada-Euán et al., 2001; González-Acereto et
al., 2006), while a number of species are still traditionally
hunted for their honey (Reyes-González et al., 2014). There
is also active promotion of such beekeeping in Mexico and
studies show, that the stingless bee species Nannotrigona
perilampoides is a cost-effective pollinator for some locallygrown
crops (González-Acereto et al., 2006).
Management of stingless bees for crop pollination
purposes, as mentioned earlier, is less popular, but efforts
are underway to promote them as crop pollinators in Brazil
(Imperatriz-Fonseca et al. 2006). Melipona fasciculata was
identified as a potential eggplant pollinator (Nunes-Silva et
al., 2013), and N. punctata and M. scutellaris have been
identified as potential pollinators of guava, greenhouse
strawberries (Castro, 2002), and apples (Vianna et al.,
Important efforts have been directed to train beekeepers
and standardize management practices (Nogueira-Neto,
1997; Villas-Bôas, 2012), quantify investment costs and
profit perspectives (Lobato and Venturieri, 2010), assess
honey properties, quality and commercialization routes (Vit
et al., 2013), rear queens artificially (Menezes et al., 2013),
and diagnose the overall situation of the sector in different
regions (Halcroft et al., 2013; González-Acereto et al.,
2006). More recently, quantitative efforts have been directed
to the optimization of stingless beekeeping. Relying on
Brazil-wide surveys, Jaffé et al. (2015) assessed the impact
of particular management practices on productivity and
economic revenues from the commercialization of stingless
bee products. Another recent contribution analyzed the
long-term impact of management and climate on honey
production and colony survival in a commercial stingless bee
from North-eastern Brazil (Koffler et al., 2015).
Stingless beekeeping should be regarded as a prime tool
to achieve sustainable development. Keeping bees can
help low-income communities earn additional revenues
from selling bee products, thus reducing the need to
exploit other natural resources and creating incentives to
protect natural habitats as food sources and nesting sites
for the bees. Moreover, beekeeping contributes to the
provision of pollination, assuring crop yields and helping
maintain plant biodiversity in natural ecosystems. Stingless
beekeeping could thus help protect the bees, safeguard
their pollination, and contribute to the development of many
rural communities. However, more efforts are needed to
optimize this activity. Achieving such optimization is difficult,
given the huge diversity of management practices (tightly
linked to cultural heritage), as well as the striking biological
differences among species (Vit et al., 2013; Roubik, 2006).
Recent interest in the production of more stingless bee
honey, as described above, has already generated some
new practices, like the developing trade of colonies of these
bees, e.g., in Australia, or attempts to introduce species
out of their natural range, like in Japan (Amano, 2004). This
poses new potential risks – as seen mainly in honey bees
and bumble bees (see diseases section for details), like the
introduction of pathogens and the loss of genetic diversity.
Therefore, optimization of stingless bee managment
should be done with care and within the borders of their
native range.