Photo: Miryan Delgado.
Satipo and Nauta municipalities are the first in Peru to grant legal rights to stingless bees.
Today’s article is about protecting special bees in the Amazon. As I read it, I couldn’t help thinking about a novella called The Bee Wife, by novelist, blogger — and advocate for indigenous Amazonian languages — Francesca Forrest.
The article is about stingless bees in Peru being granted legal rights.
Damien Gayle at the Guardian, “Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights. …
“It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest’s long-overlooked native bees – which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting – now have the right to exist and to flourish. Cultivated by Indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian times, stingless bees are thought to be key rainforest pollinators, sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem health.
“But they are faced with a deadly confluence of climate change, deforestation and pesticides, as well as competition from European bees, and scientists and campaigners have been racing against time to get stingless bees on international conservation red lists.
“Constanza Prieto, Latin American director at the Earth Law Center, who was part of the campaign, said: ‘This ordinance marks a turning point in our relationship with nature: it makes stingless bees visible, recognizes them as rights-bearing subjects, and affirms their essential role in preserving ecosystems.’
“The world-first ordinances, passed in two Peruvian regions in the past few months, follow a campaign of research and advocacy spearheaded by Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, founder of Amazon Research Internacional, who has spent the past few years traveling into the Amazon to work with Indigenous people to document the bees.
“Espinoza, a chemical biologist, first started researching the bees in 2020, after a colleague asked her to conduct an analysis of their honey, which was being used during the pandemic in Indigenous communities where treatments for Covid were in short supply. She was stunned by the findings.
” ‘I was seeing hundreds of medicinal molecules, like molecules that are known to have some sort of biological medicinal property,’ Espinoza recalled. ‘And the variety was also really wild – these molecules have been known to have anti-inflammatory effects or antiviral, antibacterial, antioxidant, even anti-cancer.’
“Espinoza, who has written a book, The Spirit of the Rainforest, about her work in the Amazon, began leading expeditions to learn more about stingless bees, working with Indigenous people to document the traditional methods of finding and cultivating the insects, and harvesting their honey.
“Found in tropical regions across the world, stingless bees, a class that encompasses a number of varieties, are the oldest bee species on the planet. About half of the world’s 500 known species live in the Amazon, where they are responsible for pollinating more than 80% of the flora, including such crops as cacao, coffee and avocados.
“They also hold deep cultural and spiritual meaning for the forest’s Indigenous Asháninka and Kukama-Kukamiria peoples. ‘Within the stingless bee lives Indigenous traditional knowledge, passed down since the time of our grandparents,’ said Apu Cesar Ramos, president of EcoAshaninka of the Ashaninka Communal Reserve. ‘The stingless bee has existed since time immemorial and reflects our coexistence with the rainforest.’
“From the outset, Espinoza began hearing reports that the bees were becoming more difficult to find. ‘We were talking actively with the different community members and the first things they were saying, which they still do to this day, is: “I cannot see my bees any more. It used to take me 30 minutes walking into the jungle to find them. And now it takes me hours.’ “
“Her chemical analysis had also turned up some concerning findings. Traces of pesticides were appearing in the stingless bees’ honey – despite their being kept in areas far from industrial agriculture. …
“For years, the only kinds of bees to have official recognition in Peru have been European honeybees, brought to the continent by colonizers in the 1500s.
“ ‘It almost created a vicious cycle. I cannot give you the funding because you’re not on the list, but you cannot even get on the list because you don’t have the data. You don’t have the funding to get it.’ In 2023, they formally began a project to map the extent and ecology of the bees, ‘because by that time we had already spoken with the [International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)] and some government people in Peru and understood that that data was critical.’
“The mapping revealed links between deforestation and the decline of stingless bees – research that helped contribute to the passing of a law in 2024 recognising stingless bees as the native bees of Peru. The law was a critical step, as Peruvian law requires the protection of native species. …
“In experiment in 1950s Brazil to create a strain that would produce more honey in tropical conditions led to the creation of the Africanized honeybee. … Now, Espinoza and her colleagues found, these Africanized bees have begun outcompeting the comparatively gentle stingless bees in their own habitats. …
“Living a semi-nomadic lifestyle in a remote part of the Avireri Vraem Biosphere reserve, Elizabeth [an Asháninka elder] farmed and kept bees at a spot in the forest some distance from her home. But she described how her stingless bees had been displaced by Africanized bees, which attacked her violently whenever she visited.
“ ‘I felt so scared, to be honest,’ said Espinoza. … ‘I want them gone.’ “
Read what happened next at the Guardian, here.
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