External activity of the stingless bee Melipona fasciculata (Smith) kept in the Brazilian Cerrado

Resin Use by Stingless Bees: A Review

“…Although resin is essential to many aspects of stingless bee nest construction and defense, little is known about how stingless bees obtain this vital resource. Some information on resin foraging can be gleaned from studies on general foraging behavior [78][79][80][81], but there are few studies that examine resin foraging in stingless bees specifically (except see [24,62,65]).…”

“…Resin foragers make up <10% of the foraging force for many species (e.g., Tetragonula minangkabau, Heterotrigona itama, Trigonella moorei, Melipona bicolor bicolor, Trigona sapiens, and Trigona hockingsi) [24,82,83], and are often outnumbered by pollen foragers (e.g., Melipona bicolor schencki (Gribodo), Trigona iridipennis (Smith), and Melipona fasciculata (Smith)) [78,81,84]. However, some species collect copious amounts of resin, with resin foragers outnumbering pollen foragers (e.g., Melipona asilvai [79]).…”

“…A variety of environmental (e.g., temperature, light intensity, humidity, resource availability) and colony (e.g., population size, developmental stage) conditions influence resin foraging frequency at the colony level, and these factors have different effects on different species [86]. For example, for some species (e.g., Trigona iridipennis, Melipona asilvai, Melipona bicolor schencki, and Melipona colimana) resin foraging activity fluctuates seasonally, but for other species (e.g., Melipona fasciculata), resin foraging is constant throughout the year [78,79,81,84,87]. Seasonal changes in resin collection could be related to many variables, such as resource availability, fluctuating pathogen pressure, and colony developmental stage [81], but these are largely unexplored.…”

Flight radius and climatic conditions affect the external activity of stingless bee Melipona rufiventris (Lepeletier, 1836)

“…The bees were taken to the release site immediately after capture (Figure 2 and 3) according behavior of bees. Knowing the behavior of bees throughout the year helps in establishing the floral calendar and in choosing the times when bees bring less food resources and must be supplemented so as not to drastically reduce the number of individuals in the colony (Freitas et al, 2020).…”

“…In addition to seasonality issues, few studies on stingless bees have been conducted for the Cerrado biome. So far only our work has been conducted with a focus on feeding and management for M. rufiventris (Freitas et al, 2020(Freitas et al, , 2021. This species, as well as other stingless bees in the Cerrado, have characteristics and particularities that influence their management and consequent production.…”