Stingless Bees

Beekeepers, we have an active type of bees which pollinate flowers, collect nectar and produce honey like apis mellifera do.

Body Size and Nest

The entrance (look in the centre of this photo)

A normal size of apis melipona is just 1/4 of a normal apis mellifera.
Blackish in color with small white strips.

They live in termite hills or mounds and use only one opening for entry and exit. The entrance can take them more  than 1.5 metres deep to reach the first hive. Usually they build up to 3 nests in one termite hill with only one entrance. The entrance connects to the first hive and then they build another small pipe like passage which connects to the second hive and the third.

Digging a termite hill (with termites present)

Do they sting? 
The bees are stingless bees shy and get scared very fast.

Honey and pollen pots

Experience
when we opened the nest for stingless bees, we saw the following:
1. Honey in brownish pots. The size of one pot is equivalent to 4 cells of honey combs.

2. Pollen in brownish pots too. The size of one cell is equivalent to 4 cells of honey combs. The pots are made from soft propolis substance.

Brood combs

3. Brood chamber has comb cells which are small but packed like normal comb cells.

4. Found the helpless queen which couldn't fly at all since it had a big belly.

Queen (with a Gold stomach)

Inside Hive
The brood is in the centre of the nest surrounded by honey and pollen pots. The color of brood combs is different from the honey and pollen pots. (see the last photo at the bottom of this post)

Honey taste
We tasted the honey and it almost had the same properties of apis melifera honey.

Way forward
We are going to keep them since they are also getting less and less because to access their honey people must destroy the nests first! And pesticide is also killing them. Finding poison free termite hills is also a challenge since of the termite hills are poisoned to kill the termites.

Inside the nest

Honey

Why African bees are not killer bees?

What a surprise?

(Experts put on protective suites while the novice are not)

Half way around the world believes that bees from and in Africa are "killer bees" a term used to describe African bees.

Well since we started going in the bee yards during day time, our bees are becoming more friendly everyday.

We will never call them killer bees though they sting.

Toni was surprised when David's sons were watching Toni, Isaac and David moving bees from a damaged hive into a new hive. We would shake the bees into a new hive without problem.

On many occasions I have worked bees with less protection and this is achieved by applying more smoke.

We commonly use maize cobs as fuel and assorted pieces of wood which don't produce odour that can easily stain the honey or irritate the bees which can easily lead to absconding.
We stopped using cow dung because it would stain honey with a bad odour and also the body and clothes.

Since smoke interferes with the smelling senses of the bees, children who are watching must smoke themselves every after a couple of minutes and this sometimes enable them to get fully involved in the operations.

Confidence is very important while working bees because when you are nervous, the body temperature rises (and produce sweat) and adrenalin is produced which enables bees to detect the you.

The way how you handle the bees is the way how they respond back; when you handle them gently and slowly yes they will not attack you badly.

African bees are killer bees if you don't play your cards well!