Stingless Bees, Peru

Safeguarding Amazonian Stingless Bees, Guardians of Biodiversity

Almost half of all stingless bee species in the world are found in the Amazon Rainforest, including in the Amazonas region of northern Peru. They play a fundamental role in pollinating native flora and regenerating degraded ecosystems.

But the existence of many species of stingless bees is seriously threatened by escalating environmental and human pressures, such as deforestation, land use change, pesticides, and climate change. These threats endanger the ecological integrity of the Amazon, including the roles played by stingless bees, and the rich Indigenous knowledge intertwined with their existence.

Under the leadership of Amazon Research Internacional, we are developing a multidisciplinary project to carry out the first mapping of stingless bees in the Amazon rainforest, protect the traditional knowledge of Amazonian Indigenous peoples, and move towards ecocentric legislation for Amazonian stingless bees.

Indigenous Traditional Knowledge: Cornerstone of Amazonas Biodiversity Conservation

Amazonian stingless bees have been integral to ecological, social, and cultural practices among Peruvian Amazon communities for centuries. An essential part of this project is to promote the preservation of the traditional knowledge of Amazonian communities on biodiversity management.

In the upcoming months, Earth Law Center will initiate the field work, developing a series of workshops with Amazonian communities to build legal capacity around Rights of Nature and help them to develop a biocultural community protocol to guarantee the protection of their Indigenous traditional knowledge.

Advancing Ecocentric Legislation to Protect Stingless Bees

Together with our partners, ELC is promoting legislative reform (No. 4994/2022/CR) to protect stingless bees. The bill recognizes the bees’ intrinsic value and seeks to declare them, along with meliponiculture (stingless bee keeping), the flora they pollinate, and Indigenous Peoples' traditional knowledge, as subjects of interest. The proposal incorporates precautionary and preventive principles to promote government protection measures for the conservation of bee species and their ecosystems. This project contrasts with most bee legislation, which protects only honey bees (Apis Mellifera) and regulates them only for their economic value and productive function.