On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 8:32 PM, Peter Chiang Mai <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

>
>   Does anyone know where to find information about breeding stingless
> queens or doing splits?
>

I do not know about internet resources, but I am sure there are lots out
there.
In the Philippines they do not raise queens for increase, they just split
the hives when they are strong and the queenless side raises a queen, like
doing walk away splits with mellifera.  (Search bee-l for walk away splits
and you will get many many hits).  I have seen hives that were like a two
super beehive with tiny supers that you could split (no frames of course),
but that was high tech.  In Bicol province they use coconut shell halves
that they keep pushing together and the bees propolize them so there are
fantastic structures with geodesic geometry.  They separate the shells at
some point and they are shipped to Japan as pollination units.  In Romblon
province they keep the bees in split bamboo tubes.  A few of the internodal
dividers are removed to make the tube more than a meter long and one of end
ones is drilled for an entrance.  Then the split bamboo is tied back
together.  It can be split to remove honey or for division, but they also
propagate them by just hanging an empty bamboo house just below the
occupied one (they are usually hung under the eave of a house).

There are a lot of stingless beekeepers in Brazil, where the honey is very
prized medicinally (especially as eye medicine).  Of course the Maya were
skilled as stingless beekeepers, often keeping them in the walls of their
houses,  but it is hard to find them now amongst the Maya.

The Australians have quite a few videos on stingless bees on youtube, but I
think that is mostly because they are more users of the internet than the
other people I have mentioned.  The aborigines hunted stingless bees but
did not keep them.  The videos I have seen suggest that they can be kept in
cans or other material, although the wild ones I saw when I worked in the
bush outside Darwin were all in the ground.

The sting is over-rated as a defense.  Stingless bees are incredibly
annoying when they get get burrowing in your hair and beard and nose.
Stan

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