---
narrator: "Manoel Xavier Rodrigues, Glaicon Nei Ferreira de Sousa, and Dionizio Jansen"
subject: Beekeeping
facilitator: Júlia Martins Rodrigues
date: 2025-01-18
approved: 2025-04-28
summary: "Meliponiculture—the practice of raising stingless bees—represents a vital intersection of environmental conservation, traditional knowledge, and sustainable agriculture in Brazil."
location: "Minas Gerais, Brazil"
topics: [ancestors, food, friendship, indigeneity, organizations, science]
---

*How do you introduce yourselves?*

**Glaicon:** My name is Glaicon, I am a meliponiculturist and beekeeper. I have been working with bees for 30 years and professionally for 11 years.

**Manoel:** My name is Manoel Xavier, I'm also a meliponiculturist and beekeeper, and I've been working with stingless bees for approximately 8 to 10 years.

**Dionísio:** I'm Dionísio Janssen, also a meliponiculturist for 8 years. I feel responsible, along with my colleagues, for spreading this practice, given that 70% of the food that reaches our table requires our bees. For those of us living in this neotropical region, stingless bees are our main pollinators.

*How is meliponiculture knowledge transmitted today, and how do you participate in this network?*

**Glaicon:** When I started in meliponiculture, I saw the need to share my knowledge with others. I began studying more and building capacity. I saw the need to raise bees in a more organized way. Over time, I realized the necessity of creating a group so that more people like me could spread the idea and transform it into environmental protection. Today, our group---which has a presence throughout almost the entire country---has done good work with students who started with ten hives and now have 400 hives. Our environmental protection work has become family income, and all this was accomplished through creating a group for training new agents.

*How does this group and network interact?*

**Glaicon:** This network interacts through shared knowledge. We have small, medium, and large meliponiculturists who have doubts and teachings. Our information sharing enables us to build capacity for healthy meliponiculture and strong, focused environmental protection.

**Manoel:** To add to that, we believe that to protect bees, we have rational management techniques that respect nature. We try to disseminate this knowledge so people can expand the number of hives and bees being raised rationally and sustainably, respecting nature.

*What role does this network play in transmitting knowledge?*

**Dionísio:** It's about bringing responsible, quality knowledge not only to group members, but to all people interested in species conservation, biodiversity, and especially our stingless bees.

*Are these exchanges informal? What is the group's purpose and which platform do you use?*

**Glaicon:** We use WhatsApp. We have a group among us that's available 24 hours a day to obtain information, management techniques, and learning---always interacting with each other and learning more each day.

*So it's a space for sharing and exchanging experiences?*

**Manoel:** Generally, people don't start with this as their primary source of family income. So obviously, all this is done during free time, when each person is available.

*What are the criteria for participating in these groups? What rules and protocols are adopted?*

**Glaicon:** Our group is very selective. We cannot address any topic that doesn't relate to meliponiculture. We keep our group well-focused on our perspective. All people there share the same idea and profile. There are people in the group who administer it, creating protocols so everyone can freely come and go with their questions and teachings.

*How are conflicts addressed when disagreements arise?*

**Manoel:** Conflicts always have a moderator who will calm the situation. The group administrators are responsible for this moderation and ensuring harmony in experience exchanges, question responses, or posts that some might find inappropriate for the occasion or the group's purpose.

**Dionísio:** These decisions are deliberated among administrators, and before any action, we first discuss what measures to take. Whether it's excluding a member or simply making a private call to get them to retract, or if it's less serious, perhaps just a correction on the topic is enough to address the issue.

*Glaicon, you're an administrator of one of these groups, correct?*

**Glaicon:** Yes, Grupo União (Union Group).

*How are these moderators chosen? Based on what criteria?*

**Glaicon:** They're chosen based on their commitment to the subject. People who truly believe in environmental protection and pollinator conservation. These people are chosen carefully. They must fit the profile to provide answers to everyone present. The people in Grupo União are handpicked based on their commitment to healthy culture and environmental protection.

*Do you have examples of teachings or exchanges that happened through these groups that modified your practice or bee protection?*

**Manoel:** May I share an example? Our main concern is: how do we save bees from extinction? By multiplying hives. Often, people go and extract a hive from nature thinking they're helping, but they're actually causing harm. One method we found for hive multiplication is division. You take a box, like this yellow *uruçu*, and divide that hive into two. Previously, we would take the daughter or mother box and move it to a distant location for division, to prevent the forager bees from the separated box from returning to the original location, leaving the other uninhabited. A great teaching we learned in the group is that we can divide the hive by placing the mother box and daughter box side by side. The forager bees will find each other and divide between the two boxes. We quickly have two hives. This is knowledge we acquired in our group.

*What do you understand as protocol?*

**Glaicon:** I understand protocol as an action. My protocol today, which directed me to reach my current state, was my daily training, learning from friends, and resolving consistent doubts. Starting to work with facts and forgetting assumptions. After I began studying Paulo Nogueira Neto, whom we lost two years ago and who is considered by the UN as one of the world's greatest biologists---he studied and taught about stingless bees at USP in São Paulo for 65 years. I’ve built capacity and directed myself with the protocol of learning from USP, from Paulo Nogueira Neto. Today I can teach what is truly factual to all people. I have students who started with ten hives and now have 400. Meliponiculture has become family income for them.

*Beyond this knowledge from the University of São Paulo, how did your journey with other communities happen? In other networks and groups?*

**Glaicon:** What happened during my journey was the opportunity to know different types of places, like indigenous villages and large companies involved in extractivism. We managed to be present in various university courses, participating in university theses in anthropology and agroecology, which somehow built our capacity and taught us, enabling us to disseminate this wonderful idea of environmental protection and meliponiculture.

*Could you tell us more about the indigenous communities?*

**Glaicon:** The indigenous communities I work with today, in Espírito Santo and Bahia, have undergone significant cultural changes and no longer live as they did before. But they still carry in their veins, in their blood, love for nature. They taught me a lot about dividing hives and caring for bees, and by caring for the village and community, I learned much from them.

*Did you visit these villages?*

**Glaicon:** I visited them and we're still friends today.

*Did they also teach you some of these techniques?*

**Glaicon:** I learned much more than I taught them.

*Today, how do you transmit this knowledge acquired from various sources?*

**Glaicon:** I’ve built capacity so I wouldn't speak from my personal perspective. I teach everything scientifically. Taken from books by great biologists, from universities, from studies. I teach what has been thoroughly studied. I'm very careful to limit myself when teaching, to ensure I'm doing what has been extensively studied.

*And you, Manoel, your path was different. How was this learning process?*

**Manoel:** My learning process---I used to work more with stinging bees, which are exotic in Brazil. I had my first contact with a cousin's meliponary. I was enchanted by the bees and ended up joining Grupo União, where I gradually acquired knowledge about each species and how to manage each species, the type of box, which box is most suitable, the dimensions of each box, the type of division, the type of hive modification, how they're fed, what type of flowers they prefer. Gradually, we solidify our knowledge. With this knowledge, we can share this information and disseminate this knowledge to other people interested in bees and nature in general.

**Dionísio:** We also have in Brazil a federal institution that's over 100 years old, INPA---the National Institute for Amazon Research---where there's work with these pollinators involving biologists from Asia, Europe, and South America. As a result, they taught us much about raising these pollinators. This greatly facilitated our work in the beginning. To this day, we share the idea of raising our bees with boxes developed by this federal agency, INPA.

*After building this knowledge over the years, learning from scientific sources and indigenous sources, what protocol was created to transmit and disseminate this knowledge through networks?*

**Manoel:** The protocols are actually rules we created to allow the group to be homogeneous and have a consistent form of knowledge transmission, always focused on the group's objective. We use the União meliponary groups to transmit what we know, as new people are always arriving. Sometimes, knowledge that's basic to us is fundamental for them to start from the beginning---learning in a guided process to practice sustainable stingless bee raising.

*Why this concern with transmitting meliponiculture knowledge?*

**Dionísio:** We feel obligated, so to speak, to be facilitators of this process. Why? To have the opportunity to share with people the importance of maintaining this biodiversity, keeping bee species alive that, as I said at the beginning, are responsible for bringing food to our tables. Most people don't know about this potential or importance that bees have for our lives.

*How is leadership in this group? Is it individual or collective leadership? Why did it happen this way? How have these dynamics evolved?*

**Glaicon:** In the beginning, it was practically the founder---me. Over time, I saw the need to let others also become administrators based on each person's capacity and effort. The group grew wings and evolved very satisfactorily. We became a group, and today, as Manoel emphasized, new people arrive daily, which for us is sometimes common---those arriving need that information.

*The group plays a fundamental role in training new meliponiculturists.*

**Manoel:** Yes, largely due to knowledge mastery. Sometimes a person has knowledge mastery but has difficulty transmitting it. But just by showing in the group, making a little video of how their hive is doing, what management they're doing, they're teaching a lot without even needing to speak sometimes. We perceive that their management and mastery is captured and perceived by group members, and they manage to transmit this knowledge.

**Dionísio:** Another thing I find relevant is this information exchange, because each creator's objective, each bee multiplier, can be different. You might have bees for a collection, for distraction, therapeutic treatment, or to have healthy foods of the best quality through these bee products. This is very important to highlight because these are different objectives within the same group that need this knowledge exchange for growth in each area where a person chooses to engage.

**Glaicon:** Something very interesting is that humanity---the first human communities, the first peoples---already directed themselves toward copying bees. If you go to Sumeria, back to Egypt, you'll discover that bees are present in all ancient peoples. This is scientifically proven. Communities were formed because they had a king, guards, foragers---all copying a bee hive. This is a structure humanity has been trying to copy from bees. It's very important today that we emphasize this magical bee creation, this bee's influence on human life---not just for the entire planet, but especially on human life and organization.

**Manoel:** It's also important to highlight that this group enables us to better know the bees. Sometimes we're valuing only the bee, concerned with environmental and preservation issues, but we need to explore each bee type's potential. We learn about the diverse types of honey they provide, diverse types of propolis. Friend Dionísio, for example, just taught me that yellow *Mandaguari* propolis is wonderful propolis. Could you explore *Samburá* a bit for us, please?

**Dionísio:** *Samburá,* which few people know about, is pollen produced by stingless bees. It's a food classified today as one of the world's best, so much so that it's the food source for future bees. This *Samburá* is nothing more than pollen enzymatically processed by bees and deposited in pots within colonies. Besides this, we also have honey and propolis extract---all wonderful foods that humans should consume periodically. None of this knowledge would be possible if we didn't have a tool like our group to transmit this knowledge to each other. It's no use researching this and keeping it within a university, in books, if it's not disseminated to the population, to creators who often have little information and limited access to books and universities. This is the great importance of having a tool like this group, plus we make excellent friends.

**Glaicon:** Yes, the group is focused with direction as Dionísio just mentioned---honey, an energetic food that bees produce through sucrose, and stingless bees through fructose. Then we have pollen, which is the male gamete of all vegetation in our biomes. It's the most relevant protein source in nutrition, not only human but animal. We also have propolis, which is extracted with antifungal, antibacterial, antibiotic enzymes that when consumed by humans, help us elevate our physical condition and significantly increase our immunity. The group is ready and able to do work not only in environmental preservation, but as Manoel said, we learn a lot from our União group, studying meliponiculture and bees.

**Manoel:** And their products too.

*You mentioned there was evolution---it began with individual leadership, then moved to collective leadership. How did these community rules and protocols evolve? What were the inspirational models and lessons learned?*

**Glaicon:** Actually, it's nothing more than our own learning from studying meliponiculture. What was created was cutting out everything that doesn't relate to meliponiculture. As things appeared, we created a protocol to maintain our focus on what represents the entire group's profile. That's how rules emerged, because we didn't know various types of problems that could arise. When they came, we created the protocol---the need to direct everyone toward healthy meliponiculture.

**Manoel:** These protocols are important because there are many beginner, adventurous people who want to enter meliponiculture but sometimes don't understand there are rules. For example, box types. We talk a lot about rational use, rational creation. What is this? You have a box for each bee type, with adequate dimensions, and adequate dimensions for each hive size. Sometimes people don't know and put a tiny bee in a very large box. It goes well, but come winter, during the rainy period, it will weaken and that hive will die. We must guide people to follow these rules to ensure meliponiculture continues progressing as it is.

**Glaicon:** What Manoel is saying is very interesting because each bee type has a specific management approach. Bees come in various sizes with different characteristics from the Apidae group. The Apidae group develops in two different segments: trigonines and meliponines. Trigonines divide by royal cells, and meliponines by cells. Understanding this bee subdivision and each specimen's pollination capacity, how they live, how they need to be treated so we can achieve comfortable meliponaries---these are fundamental ideas we share in our group for responsible, focused meliponiculture.

*What other examples of rules govern the group, for instance, regarding commercial use and informal exchanges?*

**Dionísio:** These rules are well-defined. In our main group, commercialization or advertising of products or anything commercial is not permitted. It's exclusively for information exchange and clarifying doubts. Commerce is prohibited in this group.

*How do you attract new members and participants? How do you search for new meliponiculturists?*

**Glaicon:** We believe our group would be and is much stronger when it has concentrated, focused people. Having large numbers of participants can sometimes take us off our trajectory. When we receive a request from an administrator to add a new member, we first call them privately and ask where they are in meliponiculture, what their perspective is. We study the person. If administrators think they're suitable for the group, we admit a new participant.

*What are your expectations for improving and evolving this protocol, knowledge transmission, and group interactions? What lessons have you extracted from this process that you plan to improve over time?*

**Glaicon:** Each person teaches us the way. Daily work, management, and knowledge create new situations where the group finds itself in a better place each day, with more knowledge.

**Manoel:** Correct, because this is very dynamic---we can't leave fixed rules. These protocols can mature according to group dynamics, with new people entering and the needs of each moment. The world is in transition, so we can't stand still. We must edit rules daily for each situation.

**Glaicon:** That's a beautiful statement, because if we observe, when we started the group, many management practices were very common that we don't use today because they've been modified. We have to change rules to accompany this.

*How did these modifications happen through these exchanges?*

**Glaicon:** Exactly as I said---observing each other, establishing management rules, knowledge, observations. I recently went to Bahia and saw a tree there. I had the opportunity and was dazzled by such grandeur, such beautiful things. I observed the flower clusters of this tree, a schefflera, loaded with pollinators---wasps, butterflies, bees. I couldn't miss the opportunity to share this new discovery throughout Brazil---this find in Abrolhos, on the Bahian continent, 70 kilometers away. This is how we form and strengthen ourselves, and the protocol always receives new directions and forms, creating a strong group. Grupo União today is a strong group.

**Manoel:** We need protocols not to be unpleasant or authoritarian, but because more people are participating---people need to know the rules to continue preserving group harmony.

**Dionísio:** Exactly. To maintain focus on what really matters to the group.

*Is environmental education focused exclusively on bees?*

**Glaicon:** No. Bees are inserted in an environment where everything is connected. For example, reforestation. Bees are very responsible because by pollinating, they don't let any type of native forest in any biome go extinct. It's fundamental to know that bees aren't only directed toward producing honey, but maintaining native biomes strong, healthy, and natural. Consequently, our springs will be suitable, flowing water, because where there's native forest, there are springs. Bees are somehow connected to springs, mangroves, seas, lakes, lagoons, dams, rivers---our entire water chain. Most interestingly, the union of this reforestation with protection of our water sources results in purer, better air and a healthy planet. This is the meliponiculturist's greatest objective---maintaining all this influence that bees give us and that keeps us alive.

**Dionísio:** It's interesting to note that because we know bees, we need to know much about what they feed on. Starting from this premise, the biggest discussion in groups I've observed lately, and it's always been this way, is the type of vegetation they visit, the type of flower they like, the type of tree, the type of resin they need. We end up discussing this a lot. Naturally, everyone will want to have near them the type of vegetation, flower, tree, plant. So we are vegetation multipliers.

**Glaicon:** Exactly. We are reforesters, just like bees. We must always think that before a bee, you must have a tree, a plant that produces food for these bees. Consequently, a producer of food for our table, for all world inhabitants. A concept our group in Juiz de Fora talks about, which I find beautiful and old: "Bee doesn't do harm, bee makes honey."

*Could you give an example?*

**Manoel:** Following this line of reasoning, I could mention that I have a farm in Leopoldina, in Piacatuba, and we're always concerned with plants that will improve bee nutrition. We're very concerned there with increasing basil, basil plantations, coffee vine, clove vine, and various other trees and plants that will support these bees' nutrition.

**Glaicon:** What Manoel is saying is so interesting---some trees are very relevant compared to others regarding melliferous pastures. For example, *pitanga*. Our meliponine bees are ready to fly up to 120 meters high, so they don't forage far. There are smaller bees, but when it comes to low trees that have great relevance in food supply---pollen and nectar---bees don't waste time. Among these we have *pitanga* and *jabuticaba*. As Manoel just explained, this is how we try to facilitate, besides feeding and bringing healthy fruit to our tables, feeding our hives. We need great plant variety, so we can't have monoculture---we need diverse plant types to serve diverse bee types, according to region and time of year. Some flowers are very abundant but have very small flowering cycles.

This is very interesting because we have a time when flowers bloom abundantly---spring, as everyone knows. So hives will experience great food discomfort in autumn and winter. Therefore, we stay alert and seek to improve our melliferous pastures so that during this off-season for bee feeding, we're involving trees in our biomes that will feed not only bees but mammals, reptiles, birds, etc., because it's a food chain.

**Manoel:** Just one observation---notice that all the plants mentioned here, besides producing food, some spices, other fruits, are also medicinal herbs that serve to treat health. And here comes production. In the same plant, you have three or four food sources. You have pollen, nectar, resin, and leaves that often serve as spices and other things.

**Dionísio:** I think it's also good to highlight that ornamental plants don't produce food for any type of pollinator. They're not angiosperms. So when we're inserting ornamental plants in our gardens, we're not collaborating with melliferous pastures. Many people don't know this information.

*Besides exchanges made in the group through the internet, which connect people from across the country, what other channels are used to propagate this information?*

**Glaicon:** I'm a small meliponiculturist. I've taken on the condition of meliponiculture, but I recognize I have a very small public reach. Sometimes, for example, I know I'm in relevant groups in Peru. They love my posts and ask me to post more. I see that we're somehow being facilitators in Peru, Argentina, here in South America. There are other countries where some of our colleagues are more present. But I see our work as a whole today, with my friends, as great progress, because some years ago, people killed bees. Today, there's understanding because our work is showing results. Dionísio, for example, Dr. Dionísio, has a completely different professional segment. Today, within his professional condition, he's clearly promoting and teaching meliponiculture and environmental preservation. This is very nice---bees are going into law, health, entertainment, various different fields, always bringing life, health, well-being.

**Dionísio:** And complementing, another way we disseminate this is through congresses and meetings we organize. Now, for example, we're organizing the monthly meeting of meliponiculturists in Juiz de Fora. This word-of-mouth is still fundamental for knowledge dissemination. It attracts many new meliponiculturists, many new people, many curious people who today or tomorrow will be great meliponiculturists, great guardians of bee propagation and environmental conservation.

**Manoel:** I'd add that as a form of knowledge dissemination, we're always invited to public events. We go to schools, squares, where there are larger crowds. We can explain and demonstrate what stingless bees are and the benefits they bring.

**Glaicon:** I work in two municipal schools as a volunteer. I work with science teachers because state schools have an educational program where science teachers must execute field classes. This isn't possible today due to lack of training. So what has been my work in these schools with students from first to ninth grade? I work with their teachers teaching this biological and morphological part of bees. They complete the educational cycle that is the field science class that the State needs today, requests, but isn't being done. It's a very nice legal project. There's also demand for bee presentations at agricultural exhibitions, agribusiness events. You yourself participated and collaborated with our rich region here, Leopoldina, where Manoel went and did exhibition work with bees and honey. It was very interesting and very nice work.

*What is your vision for the group's future?*

**Glaicon:** I have an optimistic vision. I'm a person who always thinks we can be better, so I didn't create this group just for it to end one day. I created it so it could take flight and reach horizons, reach as many people as possible, and the result would be at minimum the satisfaction of living with health, with freedom for our children, grandchildren, all inhabitants, our descendants who come forward, to have a better world, a healthier world, something really nice. I don't want our group to end. To fix this information, I'd cite the case of our friend PPP, who must be 93 years old, working with stingless bees for 40, 50 years. If you asked him 50 years ago, today you'd have the answer that his own self-motivation and enchantment with bees kept him going. Even he is a reference for us. I think the group's future objective is that we don't pass through here leaving only peace. We must make our contribution to improving the world, the planet, and the population in general. The group becomes so strong that when my friends call me privately or say something in the group, I stay quiet because I want to listen---it seems like I'm going to learn something more. So our desire is always to continue, improve. This is very nice and true. The meliponiculturist has a mission in my view---the mission of not letting some pollinators, these wonderful insects, go extinct. Isn't that right, Manoel? This bee here is a capixaba bee from Espírito Santo that is extremely endangered, on the first extinction list.

**Dionísio:** Does it only exist in Espírito Santo?

**Glaicon:** Only in Espírito Santo. It's not known as *Capixaba* anywhere else---that's why it's called *Uruçu Capixaba*. What's interesting is highlighting what led this bee to extinction. The invasion of mangroves, mountains, monoculture, condominiums, deforestation, industry---industry caused this bee to become extinct. Today, we have this bee in the south of the country, in the mountains of Petrópolis and Teresópolis, because this bee only survives 700 meters above sea level. Certainly, Paulo Nogueira Neto wasn't wrong. If Espírito Santo today needs pure *Capixaba*, we can send them some. Because the meliponiculturist had the responsibility to treat this pollinator with love to prevent extinction. So we're going to see this *Capixaba Uruçu* hive now.

**Dionísio:** The yellow *Uruçu* is a bee that is truly endangered and continues to be endangered. We no longer find it in nature.

**Glaicon:** Exactly. It builds its nests, every 3 kilometers on average. It flies 4. Today we have only 200 hives. I believe that registered in the last 3 years, I multiplied about 4 thousand specimens that were sent to other meliponaries that today have 300, 200 hives. So it's a bee that is far from extinction but still endangered because it's not present in Atlantic forests.

**Dionísio:** And remembering that this bee is from our Atlantic forest.

**Glaicon:** Yes. Can't forget to highlight. The yellow *Uruçu* bee divides into 11 types of yellow uruçu. The one from our Atlantic forest is the mondore, which is the bugia---that's the popular name. So we're going to open the box here for people to see.

**Dionísio:** This bee looks like gold, doesn't it?

**Glaicon:** It looks like gold. Look how beautiful. It has the color of the Atlantic forest howler monkey, so it has the popular name *Bugia* bee. Taking advantage of this connection, these here are the resins, right?

**Dionísio:** These are geopropolis used to make propolis extract.

**Glaicon:** Exactly. Which protects the hive from fungi, bacteria.

**Dionísio:** Yes. And we talked so much about *samburá* and honey---the honey of stingless bees is stored in these pots, called *samburá*. Here there are pots with samburá and pots with honey, and extraction is totally different from traditional apiculture.
