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Stingless bees are in the news at the moment because scientists in Australia have identified unique antibacterial properties in their honey giving ‘sugarbag’ honey great potential in modern medicine. I first heard about stingless bees being used for honey production back in 2013 at Apimondia in Kiev, but haven’t given them a lot of thought since—till now. At the time though, I was intrigued by an excellent presentation given by a schoolgirl from Bangka Island, Indonesia on the potency of stingless bee honey and their usefulness in her community. Stingless bee honey is an expensive product and meliponiculture is helping families increase their incomes and living standards in many parts of the world where tropical climates provide ideal conditions for this bee.
Bees for Development
Just this week, the Bees for Development newsletter featured an account of their latest project in Peru to support local people keeping these fascinating insects and also earning a living from them. https://www.beesfordevelopment.org/blog/stingless-beekeeping-a-growing-opportunity/ (If you visit this site, you will find some good images of stingless bees and their nests).
Stingless Bees
So what are stingless bees and where do they fit in to the animal kingdom? Well, they are tiny tropical bees that are very closely related to honey bees whose ancestors appeared on our planet 120 million years ago (MYO). Honey bees and stingless bees separated 80 MYO and evolved different characteristics. They both belong to the family Apidae but taxonomic ranking separates them at tribe level. In biology, a tribe is a taxonomic ranking above the level genus but below family, and so honey bees belong to the tribe Apini, and stingless bees to the Meliponini tribe. This is why we use two separated terms apiculture and meliponiculture when we describe human management of these animals.
My son’s ears pricked up at the sound of stingless bees when he asked what I was researching this week, but I hastily added that they are tropical bees and he won’t be seeing them in Piperhill. Besides, they are not completely defenceless and can give beekeepers lots of irritating little bites. Stingless bees weigh about 4mg compared with a 100mg honey bee which is nearly 25 times heavier and produces much more honey. A stingless bee colony is much smaller than a honey bee colony which can contain as many 50 to 60,000 members. Depending on the genus of stingless bee, a colony may contain as many as 10,000 bees (Tetragonula carbonaria) or as few as 4,000 in the Austroplebia australis. Honey production varies too and some colonies produce 840 g honey a year. In Northern Australia, which is hotter and more tropical that the south, there is increased stingless bee honey production. Suburban areas of Australia tend to provide more forage for stingless bees. Australians refer to these insects affectionately as ‘sugarbag’ bees and they have been known to Indigenous Australians for thousands of years and the honey has provided them with sugar and also been used medicinally to treat conditions including itchy skin and sores.
Sugarbag honey is runny and always has a higher water content than honey bee honey so it requires special consideration and labelling as it doesn’t come under the Codex Alimentarius (Latin for Food Code) which is a collection of international standards and codes of practice for food. In Peru it is harvested and extracted by sucking honey out of cells using a syringe. In Australia they use a method called “pry, pierce, drain and strain” Heard (2019)1 to extract honey from the tiny storage pots constructed mainly of propolis with a bit of wax. Unlike the cells in a honey bee comb, stingless bees do not reuse these little pots.
Western honey bees are not native to Australia and were introduced in 1822. There are five other species of non-native bees including Apis cerana ( which arrived uninvited) in Australia, but an estimated 2,000 native bee species live there; 1,660 of which are named species and include the stingless bees. Many of these are used in pollination of crops such as macadamia nuts and many people keep colonies of stingless bees to promote diversity and to harvest a little honey. Australian celebrity chef Kylie Kwong praises this unique honey and uses it in some of her recipes including deep-fried tofu.
A recent study by Fernades et al. (2025)2 analysed honey from Tetragonula carbonaria ,Tetragonula hockingsi, and Austroplebeia australis in search of antimicrobial properties and discovered that the former had the highest antimicrobial activity while the latter had the lowest. Interestingly, honey samples from Tetragonula carbonaria stored for 18 years still had non-peroxide- based activity after such a long time. Heat treatment didn’t degrade the antibacterial properties either.
To clarify, there are two types of antimicrobial activity, peroxide and non-peroxide. Peroxide-based activity is linked to the enzyme glucose oxidase which oxidises glucose in a chemical reaction and turns it into gluconolactone and hydrogen peroxide which prevent bacteria growing in honey for example. It preserves other foods too.
Non-peroxide-based activity is linked to bioactive compounds in honey such as phenolics and flavonoids that are derived from plants. What gives Manuka honey its unique antibacterial properties is non-peroxide-based and dependent on a compound called methylglyoxal (MGO) found in the nectar of plants of the genus Leptospermum in the myrtle (Myrtacaeae) family.
The effectiveness of honey from Tetragonula carbonaria is not attributed to MGO (nobody has ever seen one of these bees on the Leptospermum1) but the flavonoids, proteins and probably the resins contribute to its effectiveness. It is interesting to note that the honey storage pots are constructed from mostly resin-based propolis.
This work raises hopes for medicine gaining more diversity and different naturally occurring chemicals and compounds to choose from when treating infections in an environment where our increased reliance on, and use of, man-made antibiotics has led to resistance and the resulting serious health problems. It also raises questions about the effect on native bees of having introduced species in their environment. Hopefully recent raised awareness of the usefulness of native bees will help to promote their well being and diversity, and provide more employment for locals in tropical regions.
References
1 Heard, T. (2019) The Native Australian Bee Book, Sugarbag Bees, Queensland, Australia
2Fernandes KE, Levina A, Cokcetin NN, Haley D, Li J, Brooks P, Gloag R, Carter DA. 2025. Strong antimicrobial activity and unique physicochemical characteristics in honey from Australian stingless bees Tetragonula carbonaria, Tetragonula hockingsi, and Austroplebeia australis. Appl Environ Microbiol 91:e02523-24.
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I find this article fascinating. Thank you for researching the topic so carefully and reporting on it in detail. I especially appreciate learning about how the stingless bees preserve their honey using antibiotics, including those in tree resin, to preserve their honey. Very different from how our honey bees achieve this!
Hello, Tom. I am pleased to hear that you enjoyed that post. Thank you for commenting.