On Wednesday morning, Sergio decided it was time to harvest honey from the stingless bee (Meliponini) colony he maintains. Before I knew what he was doing, the lid was off so I don’t have a shot of it beforehand. The colony lives in a dilapidated wooden box, sitting on a stump up against the back of the house. Using a spoon, he scraped the honey-bearing cells away from the brood chambers. The brood comb is the lighter-colored portion of the nest.
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This is a photo of the lid of the box. You can see the difference in the color and texture of the nest material. Most species use cerumen, a mixture of wax and plant resin to construct their nests.
Stingless bees not only don’t have a defensive sting like the well-known honeybees, these exhibited no defensive behavior at all during the process of scraping out the honey. Readers wanting to know more about these fascinating bees may find this web site useful: Stingless bees.
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By the time Sergio was done, nearly 3/4 of the mass had been removed from the colony. The honey-bearing portion was taken to a sink and the honey squeezed from the chambers, almost as you would squeeze the juice from a cluster of grapes. A strainer was used to catch any loose material or bees that had been inadvertently caught.
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The remaining cerumen was returned to the bees after the honey had been extracted, just as one does with honeybees. This minimizes the impact to the colony by giving them back the materials they use to construct brood and honey chambers.
