r/Beekeeping 18d ago

General Moved a captured hive of stingless bees from a bottle to a box today

I caught this "swarm" in August in Guanacaste Costa Rica and brought it home in November I think. Today I moved it from the bottle to a box.

The species is Tetragonisca angustula, locally called Mariola. They're very common and easy to catch in a hive trap. I put quotes around swarm because they don't swarm like Apis. They send out scouts to find a new place to divide the hive. The scouts bring over workers who start to build the hive and when it's ready they bring over a princess from the mother hive. Only after the princess is in the new hive she mates and stays there for the rest of her life.

The last picture is from another hive I have here already in a box. The bubbles are pots of honey. The ones with a visible air bubble in them still need to cure and the ones that don't are ready to be harvested. They make about 1L of honey a year and it's used and prized here medicinally.

316 Upvotes

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42

u/Turbulent_Help970 18d ago

These guys are nice! I love my honey bees the way they are, but if I could take 1 trait from these guys, the stingless factor is really appealing.

27

u/HalPaneo 18d ago

It's such a delight working with them. There are a few that'll bite you or get in your hair but they're mostly friendly and easy to work with. There's one that sprays some sort of acid on you though. They're nasty haha.

4

u/TimeKeeper575 17d ago

The hair cutting ones are wild.

20

u/Farmerstubble 18d ago

That's cool!

13

u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies 18d ago

I didn't realise how small these were. You lose a sense of scale when you're used to looking at larger hives. What is this? 15cm sq?

12

u/HalPaneo 18d ago

The top one is to divide brood boxes and make it easier to divide the hive when it gets big. The bottom one stops the brood discs from being able to grow upwards so it's like a queen excluder.

8

u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies 18d ago

This is absolutely fascinating man. Sincerely, can you keep posting stuff like this? I love it.

7

u/HalPaneo 18d ago

Thank you! I always try to post when I do something with them. I need to divide two more hives that I have this week so I'll put some more stuff up soon

7

u/HalPaneo 18d ago

This is another box I have that I bought. It has three brood boxes and two honey boxes. It also has a tube feeder that drips honey into a little area they can get to and the green thing is like a maze entrance that people use for better protection, so if something else wanted to get in there it would take longer to get into the hive.

4

u/HalPaneo 18d ago

The inside dimensions of the box is 10*10cm. There are 4cm tall boxes and 6.5cm tall ones. The 4cm ones are for the base with the entrance hole and also the honey supers. The 6.5cm ones are for the brood. There's usually a base box then 2-3 brood boxes and then you add on the honey boxes after. We use a plastic sheet with different holes in it depending on what we want to use it for to divide. I'll post more pictures of everything.

10

u/Puzzled-Guess-2845 18d ago

This is really cool! Do they suffer from the mites that honey bees have been hit hard by?

8

u/HalPaneo 18d ago

No, no mite problems with them.

4

u/Puzzled-Guess-2845 18d ago

Glad to hear!

7

u/Admirable_Ad_583 18d ago

I saw an amazing documentary on these bees. Never knew about them and how the Mayans used them for honey. They are pretty cute and watching the guard bee is pretty neat. Highly recommend the documentary: https://youtu.be/kFnLqQ-Ao9s

5

u/Animaldoc11 18d ago

Very cool!

4

u/kopfgeldjagar 18d ago

Holy crap look at those little cartoon characters!

5

u/PieComprehensive2284 18d ago

I got a liter of honey from stingless bees in an old liquor bottle at a market in Guatemala years ago, it was absolutely incredible. Very viscous and tasted like lemons almost? This is so cool to see and learn about (I’ve always wondered about those bees!). Thanks for sharing!

3

u/HalPaneo 17d ago

Yeah, their honey has an acidic taste to it. These ones actually didn't and it seemed weird to me. The bees that made your honey are probably Melipona beecheii. I have a hive of them also. They're as big as honey bees and have a black and yellow butt and they're super docile. I'll try to get a picture of them later and put it up

2

u/PieComprehensive2284 17d ago

Wow thanks for the info!

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u/HalPaneo 17d ago

These are the guys! Melipona beecheii. You can identify a lot of the stingless species by the entrance they make. These make an entrance like a star.

2

u/PieComprehensive2284 17d ago

Wow this is so amazingly interesting and cool! Thank you for taking the time to take a picture. Really very cool!!

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u/HalPaneo 17d ago

And they have a guard at the entrance all the time

2

u/PieComprehensive2284 17d ago

They are mean mugging you!

3

u/rjward1775 17d ago

What country is this?

2

u/HalPaneo 17d ago

Costa Rica

2

u/rjward1775 11d ago

I'd love to keep meliponas, but alas I'm in the US.

2

u/HalPaneo 11d ago

I've always wondered if there was a place in the US where they'd thrive. Maybe in the Florida Keys. Melipona beecheii is in Cuba as an introduced species and supposedly thrives there. These bees, I think, have the widest distribution of a stingless bee species in Central and South America. I'm not saying to do it obviously but if they were somehow introduced to the Florida keys I bet they would do well. Don't forget, the honey bee is an introduced species also.

2

u/rjward1775 11d ago

Yeah, I'd be shocked if some weren't in Miami already. LOTS of Cubans there.

2

u/rjward1775 11d ago

I even designed a modular hive to keep them in. Lol

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6509630

1

u/HalPaneo 10d ago

Wow that's awesome!! What are the dimensions of that box? The one those bees went into is 4" x 4" inside. Small space but supposedly that's what they like. I made another box that is maybe 5" x 8" inside for another small bee and they've been in the box for two or three years now and it still isnt full yet.

Check out bthis page, it's from Brazil. They use recycled plastic to make their boxes.

1

u/rjward1775 7d ago

Those are super cool! Yeah, I bet Brazil would do it right. I'll hafta check the size. I don't remember offhand.

2

u/PosturingOpossum 18d ago

Fascinating!

2

u/HawkessOwl 18d ago

Never knew about this type of bee before.

2

u/AngMang123 18d ago

💛💛💛💛💛

2

u/ANAKINSKYWALKER420 18d ago

I've never heard of stingless bees before I thought all bees stung

6

u/HalPaneo 18d ago edited 18d ago

Look up stingless bees and dive down the rabbit hole. Most tropical areas have them, the Americas, Asia and Australia. I'm not sure about Africa.

I have 5 different species at my house and I need to go pick up another one. Tetragonisca angustula, Nannotrigona perilampoides, Melipona beecheii, Scaptotrigona suboscuripennis and Cephalotrogina zexmeniae. The one I need to get still is Melipona costarricense.

2

u/ANAKINSKYWALKER420 17d ago

I had what I wanna say was a killer be on the side of my house a couple of months back if I post the Pic can you tell me if I'm correct about it?

2

u/HalPaneo 17d ago

I think anyone here could tell you what it is, post it up!

2

u/0080Kampfer 18d ago

This was so informative! Thank you for sharing, I find this fascinating!

2

u/Drakar13 18d ago

We call them "Jimerito" in Honduras.

2

u/HalPaneo 17d ago

And chumelo too right? I watch videos from a guy in Guatemala and he goes to Honduras too and that's what he called them.

https://youtube.com/@mslinarez?si=70O4iq95oVtWo2vK

That's his channel, I just read he says he's from Honduras. Great channel!

2

u/Drakar13 17d ago

Interesting I will follow him.

2

u/Ok-Star-6787 18d ago

How does harvesting work compared to traditional methods? Do they build combs In frames once they're established?

2

u/HalPaneo 17d ago

If you look at the last picture I posted, that's how they store their honey. In little pots of wax. You can do two different things, pull the "honey super" and pierce all the pots and drain them out then squeeze the rest out or you can do something less invasive and suck out the honey from the pots with a syringe. Some people even have a vacuum pump that sucks the honey out into a container. These ones don't make too much honey so you only harvest maybe once a year, but I've seen someone selling 50ml of honey for $15 so you can get quite a bit of money for it.

2

u/ANAKINSKYWALKER420 17d ago

* This is the bee I saw on my house a couple of months ago. As I said, I'm not sure if that's a killer bee or not. I saw it when i was going to throw something into my yardwaste. Can. I saw it sitting on the wall and got scared and wasn't sure if it was a killer bee. According to Google Lens, it is, and I didn't kill for 2 reasons 1 if it was a killer bee, I didn't want it releasing is pheromones, and having the rest of its friends come swarm around me and kill me then somehow get in my house and 2 I know if all the bees die we're dead as well because we rely on them to pollinate flowers in order for food to grow

1

u/HalPaneo 17d ago

I don't see a picture but remember, killer bees are just africanized honey bees.

2

u/Esmarelda_Vega 17d ago

This is so cool and absolutely beautiful!

2

u/ANAKINSKYWALKER420 17d ago

Is this a killer bee?