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By Katrina Miller and Rosa Chavez Yacila
As a child, Heriberto Vela, an Indigenous resident of Loreto, Peru, watched his father pull nests of wild stingless bees from trees in the Amazon forest. Together, the two then extracted honey from the nests to help cure colds and other ailments.
The stingless bees are local to the Amazon, unlike the more familiar but invasive honey bees from Africa and Europe that have spread to the Americas. Perhaps the most apparent difference is that stingless bees do sting. Its honey, liquid enough to drink in liquid form and said to have a citrus aftertaste, is used by many Peruvian locals as an herbal medicine.
Mr. Vela’s father didn’t know how to save the bees: they flew away or even died. “We would remove the nests and leave them lying on the forest floor,” Vela said. “Those bees were lost. “
Today, Mr. Vela’s strategies are more sophisticated. His circle of relatives owns 76 stingless honeycombs in square wooden boxes placed on sticks and scattered throughout his house. Each synthetic nest has several crates, however, Mr. Vela collects the honey from a single one, which he calls a honey jar, and leaves the rest to the bees. “They want me to live,” he said. If I take it away from them, they may run away. “
The Amazon is home to hundreds of species of stingless bee, but as deforestation converts the tropical landscape into farms and ranches, these and other native pollinators are in danger of disappearing. Pesticides, climate change and competition with the honey bee, which is better adapted to agricultural areas than the stingless bee, introduces more strain.
Mr. Vela’s circle of relatives is one of the few that raises stingless bees and lives off the source of income they provide. Cesar Delgado, an entomologist at the Peruvian Institute for Amazon Research, who helped Mr. Vela hone his practice. And you need to broaden the appeal. Beekeeping is a very smart way for forests and communities to adapt to climate change,” he said.
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