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“It’s a whole world to explore, perhaps as rich as wine,” says Brazilian chef Alex Atala, who hopes his country will make the most of the honey grown there.
Long overlooked, Brazil’s bumble bee is making a comeback, with people like Luiz Lustosa, a 66-year-old former civil servant, stepping up efforts to boost their long-dwindling population. .
Lustosa likes to deal with bees. He doesn’t wear a suit or special gloves; a light net is enough to cover his face. These types of bees are stingless. Although they attack him furiously, they do no harm.
Of the 550 species of stingless bees known to exist in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, about 250 of them are found in Brazil, according to Cristiano Menezes of the Brazilian Agricultural Corporation.
However, they are little known outside rural and indigenous communities, having moved into a much smaller space than European and African bees brought to this country over the centuries, because they are more prolific in honey and wax production.
Most of the honey produced in Brazil today comes precisely from non-native stinging bees.
For people like Lustosa, president of the Native Bee Institute, that needs to change. Native Bee, a non-profit organization that plants trees to expand the habitat of native bees and educates people about their important role as pollinators, seeks to show that bees are necessary for the environment and nature and are there to help us.
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