Did you know that honey bees aren’t the only insect that can make honey?
Read my article at The Conversation:
Wasps, aphids and ants: the other honey makers
© Manu Saunders 2018
meliponine
Bees: the triple threat of the insect world
Have you ever felt underappreciated? As if people assume you can only contribute one skill to the world, and not much else…?
Imagine how bees feel. Not only do 99.9% of bee species live in the shadow of the European honey bee, most of the time they only get credit for pollinating flowers. And a few make honey. That’s all they do, right?
Actually, no. Bees do a lot of other things in their ecosystems. They have a very active life outside their relationship with flowers.
The stingless bees (Tribe: Meliponini) are some of the most intriguing. There are about 500 species of stingless bee around the world, mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. Like honey bees, they also make honey; albeit in gourmet, rather than commercial, quantities. (Their honey also has a very different flavour to the honey you buy in the supermarket.)
Ecology is not a dirty word 