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Stingless Bees: Their Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution by Christoph Grüter

(Book Review) Springer International Publishing, 2020. x + 385 pp. Price
€109.99 hardcover, €93.08 ebook,...

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 The
CROSS-POLLINATOR
Issue 22, June 2021
Newsletter of the Inside this issue
Australian Native Bee Association Message from committee ............ 2
Feature Article ............................. 3

https://australiannativebee.org.au/ Research highlights ...................... 7

https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Native.Bee.Association/ Book Review ................................ 8

https://www.instagram.com/australiannativebeeassociation/
Original articles, new information and news
from the world of native bees
Upcoming events etc ................. 10
Native bee News........................ 12
Branch News.............................. 13
Branch Contacts ........................ 18

Francisco (right) and colleague checking that this hive of stingless bees is queenless
so it will attract males for study. Read more in this month’s feature article

The Cross-Pollinator, June 2021 Page 1.

 Book Review
Stingless Bees: Their Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution
by Christoph Grüter
Springer International Publishing, 2020. x + 385 pp. Price
€109.99 hardcover, €93.08 ebook, ISBN 9783030600907
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030600891
Review by Tobias Smith, stingless bee researcher at the
University of Queensland, June 2021
With over 600 known species globally, the stingless
honey bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are the largest group
of highly eusocial bees. Like the Apis honey bees
(Apidae: Apini), stingless bees live in colonies of hun-
dreds or thousands, comprising an egg laying queen,
her worker daughters and male drones, and they make
and store honey. Unlike the honey bees, stingless bees
are restricted to the tropics and subtropics and rather
than storing their honey in hexagonal wax cells, sting-
less bees store their honey in honey pots constructed
from a mix of wax and plant resins. Research on sting-
less bees has a long history, and recently the keeping
and management of stingless bees is becoming increas-
ingly popular throughout their range.
In Stingless Bees: Their Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution
Christoph Grüter provides a sensationally comprehensive
overview of what is currently known about stingless bees.
This is a technical, academic book that delves deep into
the biology, ecology, behaviour and evolution of stingless
bees. Grüter has brought together the globally dispersed,
and often hard to access scientific literature on stingless
bees and essentially catalogued and summarised it in a
single volume for the benefit of readers. The referencing
is an achievement in itself, with each chapter meticulously nest defence, in which Grüter explains in great detail the
referenced, and the whole book bringing together about interesting case of the Lestrimelitta robber bees from the
American tropics. This section opens with the memorable
800 different pieces of global stingless bee scientific litera-
ture, from multiple languages. Summary tables and fig- statement: “One of the main threats to stingless bee colo-
ures are used throughout, to support the information in nies is other stingless bee colonies”. Lestrimelitta robber
the text, as well as photos and drawings in some places. bees are found only in Central and South America, and
The writing is scientific but is presented in an accessible, evolutionary time has led to these bees not collecting pol-
easy to read and enjoyable manner. len and nectar from flowers, but instead raiding other
nearby stingless bee colonies to plunder their hard-earned
The book is divided into ten chapters, covering topics in- resources. During this story Grüter also introduces us to
cluding stingless bee evolution and diversity, nesting biol- the other robber stingless bee genus, Cleptotrigona,
ogy, mating, brood rearing, colony defence, division of which occurs in the African tropics. Of course, this chapter
labour, communication and foraging, and pollination. Each also covers the literature on the dramatic inter-colony
chapter is then organised into sections covering different takeovers that occur within our Australian species,
components of the chapter topic. For example, the chap- Tetragonula carbonaria and Tetragonula hockingsi. The
ter on swarming and mating has eight sections, covering same chapter has sections summarising the pest insects
topics such as swarming phases and swarming distances, that prey upon stingless bees around the world.
queen replacement and production, and the complexities
of mating. The detailed description of the stages of sting- In bringing together the huge amount that is currently
less bee nest establishment are a particularly nice part of known about the behaviour, ecology and evolution of
this chapter, explaining the slow and cryptic process from stingless bees, Grüter also infects the reader with intrigue
start to finish using examples from the handful of species and excitement for what remains unknown. While Grüter
for which this has been studied. presents a well explained and detailed overall story of the
stingless bees, he does so by piecing together bits and
Another notable section is from the chapter that covers pieces of the puzzle from individual studies across many

Page 8. The Cross-Pollinator, June 2021

Example of the rich information presented in this book
different species. Reading between the lines it is clear that
for the vast majority of the world’s stingless bee species,
most aspects of their individual biology, ecology and be-
haviour remain unknown or poorly understood.
Something small that further impressed me about this
book is that Grüter includes, in the brief section about
honey in chapter one, a summary of the very recent Aus-
tralian research from the University of Queensland that
identified the rare and healthy sugar trehalulose in sting-
less bee honey. This is despite the fact that this honey
research was only published in mid 2020, not long after
Grüter submitted his book manuscript to his publisher.
No doubt extra edits such as this are a reflection of the
huge effort that Grüter must have gone to in putting
together this comprehensive resource.
This book is not a stingless bee keeping manual and
makes only passing mention of the stingless bee keep-
ing industries that are rapidly growing in tropical and
subtropical regions around the world. As such, this book
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does not include any content on stingless bee keeping
techniques. Luckily other relatively recent publications,
both here in Australia and elsewhere, such as in Brazil,
Mexico and Malaysia, provide detailed accounts of the
management of stingless bees. Grüter’s book follows from
and builds on other great, but now dated books that cover
in depth the science of stingless bees, including Roubik’s
1989 publication Ecology and Natural History of Tropical
bees and Michener’s 1974 The Social Behaviour of Bees.
It is hard to critique this book, as it is truly an immense
contribution to the field of stingless bee science. It is
worth considering though, that this book is published only
in English, as are over 77% of Springer publications. Yet if
one looks at the distribution of stingless bees globally,
only a small percentage of species are found in English-
speaking countries. South and Central America are
thought to have over 500 species, with Brazil alone having
over 330 known species. While English has, rightly or
wrongly, become the international language of science, it
would be a great shame if being published only in English
limits the number of new students, researchers and en-
thusiasts of stingless bees that can access the content of
this book. I hope that the publisher considers publishing
translations of this book in languages spoken in the re-
gions that are particularly rich in stingless bee species and
stingless bee research, in particular in Portuguese and
Spanish.
This is a very expensive book, which does reduce its acces-
sibility. The publisher has somewhat frequent sales
though, sometimes of up to 40% off (sign up to the Spring-
er Publishing newsletter to be alerted to these). Given the
huge interest for stingless bees in Australia, perhaps en-
couraging local libraries to add this book to their cata-
logue could help improve its accessibility here.
I was waiting for the publication of this book ever since I
first heard that it was in progress, and after the long wait I
was not disappointed. I have spent many enjoyable hours
reading this book and am still finding little gems of con-
tent that I wasn’t aware of before. This book will be indis-
pensable to students and established researchers of sting-
less bees alike, as well as being of interest to motivated
stingless bee keepers and enthusiasts who want to dig
deeper into the science of these unique and exciting bees.
The Cross-Pollinator, June 2021 Page 9.