Adony Melathopoulos wrote:
>
>On Mon, 11 Mar 1996, James Graham wrote:
>
>There are stingless bee species in Mexico, but I'm fairly sure there are
>none in any of the southern states.
 
Right - in the eastern part of Mexico, they reach almost to Monterrey, and
in the west, they come up the mountains to Yecora.
 
> The postdoc in our lab came back with some when he was
>at a meeting in January.  The stuff was runny and fermented, so I guess
>people water it down.  I would imagine they do this because either not
>enough honey can be taken from a nest, or the nests are found too
>infrequently to get enough (or just poor quality control).
 
Actually, that's the natural state of their honey, at least the stuff I've
seen when breaking open their nests in Panama. I don't think it keeps well
at all - why should it? It doesn't have to last them all winter...
 
>>      b)  If these bees do have such potential, could they be kept in
>>          conventional hives, or would new technology have to be developed
>>          for them?
>
>I don't think this has been done.  I have heard they are a bitch to
>handle.  Dr. Mark Winston once told me that when he his worst experience
>with bees was when he was messing around with a stingless bee colony in
>French Guiana.  They can't sting, but they can bite, and some species are
>so small that they crawl though any cracks in your gear.
 
Their nest architecture is pretty much incompatible with any sort of hive
design one can imagine, and varies from species to species. The yield per
nest is pretty small, and it's hard to extract without damaging (if not
destroying) much of the nest, even if you keep them in styrofoam coolers as
Dave Roubik does in Panama.
 
>>      d)  Even if they aren't commercially viable, I think this would be a
>>          fun project.  Is it possible to get some of the critters to play
>>          around with?
>
>I agree, an observation nest would be fun, but I think impossible since
>they are not endemic to the U.S.
 
Probably not impossible, under controlled conditions, but I don't know it's
exactly desirable, since they MIGHT carry pathogens. A slim risk, but why
take it for something not commercially viable?
Sincerely,
 
Doug Yanega       Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA      phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949
 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology
          http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82