Expanding involvement of the public in citizen science projects can benefit both volunteers and professional scientists alike. Recently, citizen science has come into focus as an important data source for reporting and monitoring United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since bees play an essential role in the pollination ecosystem service, citizen science projects involving them have a high potential for attaining SDGs. By performing a systematic review of citizen science studies on bees, we assessed how these studies could contribute towards SDG reporting and monitoring, and also verified compliance with citizen science principles. Eighty eight studies published from 1992 to 2020 were collected. SDG 15 (Life on Land) and SDG 17 (Partnerships) were the most outstanding, potentially contributing to targets related to biodiversity protection, restoration and sustainable use, capacity building and establishing multi stakeholder partnerships. SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 4 (Quality Education), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) were also addressed. Studies were found to produce new knowledge, apply methods to improve data quality, and invest in open access publishing. Notably, volunteer participation was mainly restricted to data collection. Further challenges include extending these initiatives to developing countries, where only a few citizen science projects are underway.
Meliponiculture, which is the rational keeping of stingless bees, has been practiced for centuries by pre-colonial populations and has been gaining adepts in recent years. In addition to being an alternative for the conservation of these pollinators, it is an activity that promotes sustainability. From a theoretical point of view, disciplinary approaches are insufficient to understand meliponiculture, due to the multiplicity of Domains and aspects that compose it. Thus, this manuscript proposes a theoretical model to analyze meliponiculture in an interdisciplinary way, dealing with the environmental, cultural, social and economic Domains. Such activity should be encouraged through participatory and interdisciplinary public policies, integrating the various factors involved, such as honey farmers (meliponists), scientists, governments, companies and non-governmental organizations. Public policy approaches to meliponiculture as an economic activity must respect the conservation needs of the stingless bee species, and whenever possible, the social and cultural values attributed to the activity.
Stingless bees (Apidae; Meliponini) occupy a great diversity of habitats in tropical and subtropical regions. They are eusocial and live in sessile colonies. Most meliponini species build nests in pre-existing cavities, such as tree hollows and stingless bee hive models imitate the conditions of natural nests. However, they are unwieldy for scientific studies, especially those focused on ecological and behavioral characteristics. We developed and tested a hive model that ensures clear visibility of the interior of the hive and facilitates ecological and behavioral studies and for environmental education. It successfully housed ten stingless bee species and one semi-social orchid bee species.
The American stingless bees species have been used in management and breeding practices by local civilizations since the pre-Columbian era. Currently, many of these species are managed commercially and maintained in meliponaries. However, divergences exist among authors about the ecological utility of these practices. Some argue that meliponaries could serve to maintain local biodiversity while others argue that they have the opposite effect. Due to pressure from beekeepers and environmentalists there are efforts to draft specific rules that legislate production and market focusing on conservating native bees. In recent years, these norms have become more specific due to the use of empirical data from the scientific community and demands from social groups and producers. This paper presents a revision on Brazilian legislation as well its applicabilities and proposes alterations in the Environmental Crimes Law.
Although the quality of citizen science (CS) data is often a concern, evidence for high-quality CS data increases in the scientific literature. This study aimed to assess the data reliability of a structured CS protocol for monitoring stingless bees’ flight activity. We tested (1) data accuracy for replication among volunteers and for expert validation and (2) precision, comparing dispersion between citizen scientists and expert data. Two distinct activity dimensions were considered: (a) perception of flight activity and (b) flight activity counts (entrances, exits, and pollen load). No significant differences were found among groups regarding entrances and exits. However, replicator citizen scientists presented a higher chance of perceiving pollen than original data collectors and experts, likely a false positive. For those videos in which there was an agreement about pollen presence, the effective pollen counts were similar (with higher dispersion for citizen scientists), indicating the reliability of CS-collected data. The quality of the videos, a potential source of variance, did not influence the results. Increasing practical training could be an alternative to improve pollen data quality. Our study shows that CS provides reliable data for monitoring bee activity and highlights the relevance of a multi-dimensional approach for assessing CS data quality.
Considering the importance of offering food supplementation to the swarms during dearth periods, we developed in this project an artisanal incubator for fermentation of supplementary protein diets for Apis mellifera bees, obtaining a fresh, nutritious and palatable product, made on the property, thus facilitating access to the beekeeper to this resource.
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