Indigenous tribes in the Peruvian Amazon get delicious honey from stingless bees, but that is not all that they derive from these industrious insects. People like the Kukama-Kukamiria tribe have what’s called a “meliponiculture”, because keeping bees is absolutely essential for them as a source of food, income and medicine. For healing, the tribes use different types of honey to treat different ailments that include colds, cuts, skin conditions, upper-respiratory tract infections, diabetes, gastrointestinal problems, pneumonia, burns, arthritis, and even cancer. The bees pollinate hundreds of native plant species, and it appears that each different combination of plants pollinated changes the medicinal and nutritional qualities of the honey produced. This is similar (but more profound) to the way that honey from bees feeding on the pollen of rosemary plants will taste different from honey made from orange blossoms.   



Meliponiculture is already widely adopted in Brazil, and is expanding throughout Peru. Scientists are working with these tribes to better understand how these effects are generated or amplified depending on the bees’ diet. For example, the honey from bees that feed on the pollen of the araza plant is being evaluated for anti-cancer properties. They have also noticed that when the tribes keep bees close to their crops, the yields of the harvest increase by up to 50%. There is still much to learn about how this culture of bees gives the forests, the tribes... and the bees, a better chance for surviving through the decades.