Queen Blueprint: In-vitro Stingless Bee Queen Rearing for Honey and Colony Upscale Production

The demand for stingless bee colonies in Malaysia has increased extensively due to the rapid advance of meliponiculture in using the stingless bee as agricultural pollinators and the commercialization of stingless bee products (honey, bee bread and propolis). Current practice used by the stingless beekeepers is usually by cutting down the trees in the rainforest areas to obtain the bee colony brood and the queen bee. This concern has led to an alternative technique to mass-produce the queen on a large scale, particularly to our native species Heterotrigona itama. To date, our research group has successfully developed an eco-friendly technique for rapid multiplication of the stingless bee colonies using in-vitro rearing procedure. Outcomes obtained from this innovation enable the production of the colonies in more sustainable and eco-friendly way, allowing for their use both ecologically and economically, and contribute to conservation efforts in Indo-Malaya stingless bees.