Stingless Bees: An Overview

Grüter, Christoph

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60090-7_1

Cited by 18 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 184 publications

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“…after being introduced to the hives (Thompson et al, 2016). In addition, even though we did not quantify the precise age of the workers, Melipona bees usually start foraging around 25-33 days after emergence (Biesmeijer and Tóth, 1998;Mateus et al, 2019), hence we can estimate the life expectance of the bees in our experiments approximately between 25 and 105 days, which is consistent with what is found in the literature for M. fasciculata and other species of this genus (Grüter, 2020b).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Foraging and Drifting Patterns of the Highly Eusocial Neotropical Stingless Bee Melipona fasciculata Assessed by Radio-Frequency Identification Tags

et al. 2021

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Bees play a key role in ecosystem services as the main pollinators of numerous flowering plants. Studying factors influencing their foraging behavior is relevant not only to understand their biology, but also how populations might respond to changes in their habitat and to the climate. Here, we used radio-frequency identification tags to monitor the foraging behavior of the neotropical stingless bee Melipona fasciculata with special interest in drifting patterns i.e., when a forager drifts into a foreign nest. In addition, we collected meteorological data to study how abiotic factors affect bees’ activity and behavior. Our results show that only 35% of bees never drifted to another hive nearby, and that factors such as temperature, humidity and solar irradiation affected the bees drifting rates and/or foraging activity. Moreover, we tested whether drifting levels would decrease after marking the nest entrances with different patterns. However, contrary to our predictions, there was an increase in the proportion of drifting, which could indicate factors other than orientation mistakes playing a role in this behavior. Overall, our results demonstrate how managed bee populations are affected by both nearby hives and climate factors, offering insights on their biology and potential commercial application as crop pollinators.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Foraging and Drifting Patterns of the Highly Eusocial Neotropical Stingless Bee Melipona fasciculata Assessed by Radio-Frequency Identification Tags

et al. 2021

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“…We also identified that the mating plug leaves a characteristic mark on the abdominal tissues of mated queens, the melanized patches, and that the number of marks likely corresponds to the number of potential mates reported in the literature, thus providing robust evidence of remating in this group. Both evidence of single and multiple paired marks find support in the literature of stingless bees: although most of our studied species showed a single pair of copulatory marks ( Figure 1 and Table 1 ), potentially corresponding to a general tendency for monandry in the group ( Strassmann 2001 ; Vollet-Neto et al 2018 ; Grüter 2020 ), we found multiple patches in M. seminigra ( Figure 1 and Supplementary Figure S4 ), a species that has already been suggested to show levels of polyandry ( Francini 2013 ). Colonies of M. seminigra headed by 1 queen were found to show multiple patrilines among brood, as revealed by molecular data, suggesting that queens mated with multiple males ( Francini 2013 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…We chose M. fasciculata as our reference species for illustrations and mechanism descriptions, because we had a complete set of specimens: unmated females (i.e., virgin queens), newly mated non-physogastric queens (i.e., recently mated, but not showing abdominal extension), mated physogastric queens (i.e., enlarged abdomen due to ovary development), newly emerged males, and sterile males (i.e., males in reproductive aggregations that have lost their genital capsules during previous mating attempts, Veiga et al 2018 ). Even though behavioral differences among species are expected ( Michener 2007 ; Grüter 2020 ), we believe our general descriptions of functional morphology may be extended to the other genera studied here, and others within the Meliponini tribe.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…Indeed, mating plugs seem to fail sometimes, as observed under experimental conditions: males may lose precedence for rivals, with more than 1 male plugging a queen simultaneously in the same mating event ( Smith 2020 ), or males may simply lose their genital capsules without successfully attaching it to a queen ( Veiga et al 2017 , 2018 ). Taken together, these reports suggest that mating plugs in stingless bees may be (1) sources of copulatory lesions in females due to the barbed structures in male genital capsules, (2) key to stimulate female fecundity, and that (3) plugs may be linked to single mating in the Meliponini ( Strassmann 2001 ; Vollet-Neto et al 2018 ; Grüter 2020 )—a general tendency expected for most social Hymenoptera ( Boomsma et al 2009 )—by preventing queen remating ( Alcock 1994 ). However, studies on mating plugs are rare, including aspects of functional morphology, thus the understanding of relationships between mating plugs, traumatic mating, and mating systems in stingless bees remains limited.…”

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confidence: 95%

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Queens remate despite traumatic mating in stingless bees

et al. 2021

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Males can control female reproduction using genital plugs to impede access by rivals. In social bees, ants and wasps, plugging may involve traumatic mating, with females being harmed. In stingless bees, chances are that plugs may promote ovarian activation, and are thought to ensure single mating—a general tendency among the social Hymenoptera. However, understanding on relationships between mating plugs, traumatic mating, and mating systems in stingless bees remains limited. To address this, we (i) compared mated queens of seven Neotropical species to understand the patterns of copulatory marks in females; and (ii) compared pre- and post-mating genitalia of males and females in M. fasciculata to depict plug functional morphology. Data revealed an unprecedented consequence of mating in stingless bees: the characteristic marks left by mating plugs on female abdomens and the inferences that can be made from them. To our surprise, in one species M. fasciculata we found that queens retain the plug long after mating, and may carry it for the rest of their lives. All the other six species retained the plug for only a short period. Remated queens were only found in M. seminigra, whose multiple copulatory marks match previous findings of polyandry in this species. Our study shows that queens can remate, and suggests that male genital morphology may determine in part the time persistence of plugs. We conclude that traumatic mating plugs do not fully prevent remating in stingless bees and that mating systems are not uniform in this group. Nonetheless, exceptional cases of facultative polyandry in social insects—e.g. when mating plugs fail—may confirm a general tendency for single mating in close link with efficient mating plugs.

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“…Seasonality and management effects could also account for differences in the relative proportion of wild to managed males. The production of brood and reproductives varies seasonally in stingless bees and connects with seasonal variation in food availability (Grüter, 2020). For example, in our study, queen mating occurred earlier in the year but the evaluation of male congregations by Mueller et al (2012) occurred later in the year, during May and June.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 56%

Gene Flow from Wild to Managed Colonies in the Stingless Bee Scaptotrigona Mexicana and an Update on its Mating Frequency

Solórzano-Gordillo

Nieh

Cruz‐López

et al. 2021

Journal of Apicultural Science

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Researchers have hypothesized that wild stingless bee colonies are a repository of genes for managed populations via the mating of managed virgin queens with males from wild colonies. We tested this hypothesis with the stingless bee, Scaptotrigona mexicana, a culturally important species in the study region. Each of ten colonies were split into two colonies and placed in a meliponary, which resulted in ten queen-right mother colonies and ten queenless daughter colonies. We allowed daughter colonies to produce gynes, which then naturally mated with males of unknown origins. Six months later, five third-instar larvae from each colony were genotyped at six microsatellite loci. Four new alleles (12% of 33 alleles) were found in daughter colonies that were not present in any other mother colony. The Fst index showed no overall significant differences between mother and daughter colonies, indicating that they belonged to the same population despite the new alleles. Interestingly, nine queens were estimated to be polyandrous, with an average mating frequency of 1.3, unlike previous reports for this species. These results have implications for the fitness of managed stingless bee colonies and suggest that a better understanding of how gene flow is affected by human management practices would be beneficial.

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Stingless Bees: An Overview

Cited by 18 publications

References 184 publications

Foraging and Drifting Patterns of the Highly Eusocial Neotropical Stingless Bee Melipona fasciculata Assessed by Radio-Frequency Identification Tags

Foraging and Drifting Patterns of the Highly Eusocial Neotropical Stingless Bee Melipona fasciculata Assessed by Radio-Frequency Identification Tags

Queens remate despite traumatic mating in stingless bees

Gene Flow from Wild to Managed Colonies in the Stingless Bee Scaptotrigona Mexicana and an Update on its Mating Frequency

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