2023-05-31 16:14:31
Between June 5th and 9th, Environment Week is celebrated. The objective is to expand the debates promoted by World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5, with the aim of alerting the population about the importance of environmental preservation. And in this care for the environment, bees and meliponiculturists play a fundamental role.
These animals are the main pollination agents, beating flies, butterflies, birds and even the wind. When they feed on floral resources, bees spread the pollen over large areas, ensuring the production of fruits and seeds, in addition to the reproduction of several plants that are essential for the preservation of the environment.
Meliponiculture is the activity of creating Meliponíneos, the famous stingless bees, aiming at the production of honey, propolis, pollen and resins. “In fact these bees have a stinger, however this is vestigial, atrophied. So they don’t use it for defense and each Meliponini species invests in other strategies to replace it”, clarifies Hiara Meneses, zootechnician and president of the Cearense Association of Meliponinicultores. According to Embrapa, this type of bee is responsible for pollination of 30% of species from the Caatinga, Pantanal and up to 90% of the species from the Atlantic Forest.
The rational breeding of these bees for the production of honey is a sustainable technology that Associação Caatinga has been disseminating for over 10 years. “In addition to promoting ecosystem services, it demonstrates to the sertanejo people the value of the standing forest and the need to protect a threatened species”, emphasizes Carlito Lima, mobilization agent for the Caatinga Association. “It also contributes to an increase in income for rural families and rescues the cultural use of honey as a nutritious food”, he adds.
Associação Caatinga has been implanting Jandaíra bee meliponaries (Melipona subnitida) and training those interested through the No Clima da Caatinga project, an initiative sponsored by Petrobras through the Petrobras Socioambiental Program. Jandaíra is an endemic species of the Caatinga that produces honey with medicinal properties. Due to the process of deforestation and selective cutting of timber species, the bee is threatened with extinction, having completely disappeared from some regions due to the absence of large trees with cavities for the bees to naturally implant their colonies.
Carlito Lima, the meliponicultor allergic to bees who paraded with the Olympic torch
The Project No Clima da Caatinga has already distributed 278 colonies of Jandaíra bees and trained 357 people. Among the beneficiaries is Carlito Lima, mobilization agent, specialist in meliponiculture and collaborator of Associação Caatinga since 2012. He dreamed of working with bees, but discovered an allergy to sting toxin in a beekeeping course. Years later, through the project, he found out about the creation of stingless bees and was finally able to fulfill his dream.
A resident of Crateús, Carlito says he started to like honey when he was very young. “My father collected honey in the forest. But we didn’t know how it was produced, where it came from, but I was always interested”, he says. In 2005, he took a course in beekeeping and was stung by several bees. Feeling bad, Carlito went to a doctor who diagnosed the allergy and recommended that he stay away from that type of work.
In 2011, he found out about Associação Caatinga’s work through a guide driver course, and became a collaborator of the institution in Serra das Almas. In 2012, he learned about the entity’s course on stingless bees, it was the opportunity he dreamed of to return to working with bees. “It was a bee that I could raise because it wouldn’t sting me, it wouldn’t cause an allergy, right? It was really good, it was magnificent. I was hired by the Caatinga Association and had the opportunity to see the construction of the meliponary.”
In 2016, Brazil hosted the Olympics and people with inspiring stories were selected to carry the Olympic torch. Carlito was one of them. “The torch was something very important in my life. I was chosen for not giving up, for persisting in fulfilling my dream of working with bees and for being able to influence other people here in my region”, she says.
“Our life is made of dreams and we are made to dream. And I talked to my friends and it seemed like a small dream, while others wanted to take bigger flights. I understood that meliponiculture was not a small dream, it was a very big dream and what I could say to myself was: keep going, believe, and wait for your turn to come… And, thank God, it did” , declares Carlito Lima.
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