Colombia proposes rules for native stingless bee management

The Colombian government proposed regulations for meliponiculture, the practice of sustainably managing native stingless bees, for the first time.

The Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development released a draft resolution for public feedback, seeking to formalize an activity that has grown in popularity with over 50% of current meliponiculturists taking it up in recent years.

Native stingless bees in Colombia live between 0 and 3,400 meters above sea level, mainly in tropical forests, and face threats from habitat loss, pesticides, and overexploitation. The new rules aim to create a single registration process for existing and future meliponaries, beekeeping operations, and will assign each colony a unique identifier and management logbook. This will offer legal security to meliponiculturists and help monitor bee populations.

The government expects the regulation to support income generation for family farms and contribute to ecological restoration. Colombia has documented around 166 species of native stingless bees, with 175 meliponaries currently operating across 23 departments and housing 4,823 colonies. The government sees protecting these bees as essential to both biodiversity conservation and economic development, especially considering that nearly 75% of food crops rely on pollination.

Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Fabio Arjona, stated the rules will address a previous lack of regulations for these important pollinators.