📹🐝MEXICO BEHIND THE SCENES#2: STINGLESS BEES🐝📹 (Patreon)

Thanks to your wonderful support we were able to film not one but TWO Deep Look episodes in Oaxaca state, Mexico in March. We hope you enjoyed our episodes about cochineal insects and the vibrant red dye they produce and our episode about stingless bees and the unusual tactics they employ to protect their honey and raise their offspring. 

Gabriela Quirós, who produced our episode about stingless bees, shares what it took to film the inside of their nest. Find out more below and watch the behind-the-scenes video above of her patiently waiting for the bees to bite her.

Gabriela Talks About Filming Stingless Bees

Stingless bee nests aren’t made up of neat hexagonal cells like honeybees’ nests. Instead, a colony of stingless bees builds oval-shaped containers and tiny capsules to hold its honey and brood.

I knew that I wanted to show a stingless bee nest in close up as part of our episode. So I planned our filming trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, for March, when beekeeper Emilio Pérez harvests his stingless bees’ honey. Once a year, when it’s dry and plants are flowering, he and his daughter Salustia Justo open up their 80 boxes of stingless bees and collect most of the honey their colonies produced the previous year – they always leave some for the bees to feed on.

A wooden box holds a nest of stingless bees of the species Melipona beecheii in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Each of the uneven, dark brown, rounded structures is a honey pot the bees constructed from a mix of wax and plant resins. To harvest the honey, beekeeper Emilio Pérez will puncture each honey pot with a large fork. The yellow pellets are the result of termite damage to the wooden box. (Gabriela Quirós/KQED)

Termites damaged this wooden box that held a stingless bee nest. So, after collecting honey from the nest, beekeeper Emilio Pérez is getting ready to move this wedding-cake-like structure that holds the colony’s developing bees into a new box. Each capsule, called a brood cell, holds a growing bee. (Gabriela Quirós/KQED)

When Emilio and I talked over the phone about how we’d film the nest, he explained that we would need to open the wooden bee box and do all our filming under a protective tent made out of tulle. The fabric wasn’t to prevent his Melipona beecheii stingless bees from flying away. Instead, it would protect them from thieving stingless bees called Lestrimelitta. These so-called robber bees don’t make their own honey. They enter the nests of other bees and steal their honey.

I asked him what precautions Deep Look cinematographer Josh Cassidy and I should take when he opened the box. He said none.

“My bees don’t bite,” he said. “They only defend themselves tangling in your hair.”

I took his word for it and didn’t worry about wearing any type of head covering. I was going to be recording audio of the bees and talking to Josh and it was easiest to do both with my face uncovered.

Deep Look cinematographer Josh Cassidy films beekeepers Salustia Justo and Emilio Pérez as they collect honey from a nest of Melipona beecheii stingless bees in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Producer Gabriela Quirós records audio. Pérez set up a tent made out of tulle around the bee box to keep out stingless bees of the genus Lestrimelitta, which survive by stealing other stingless bees’ honey. (Rosa Tuirán/KQED)

But Josh was worried about a warning we had received from entomologist David Roubik, who has spent decades studying stingless bees and just retired from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama. He had told me that Scaptotrigona, a more defensive genus of stingless bees than the Melipona beecheii we were going to film inside the box, can sometimes fly down your throat when they’re disturbed. To avoid this, he recommended that we keep our mouths shut. Out of an abundance of caution, Josh decided to wear a head covering.

Thankfully, when Emilio opened the box of Melipona beecheii bees, the ones that flew out were completely unconcerned with us. They congregated at the top of the tent and I was able to record the sounds they made.

The stingless bees really were the ones most in need of protection and the tent, which had a flap that allowed us to enter and exit, turned out not to be enough. While we were filming, Emilio spotted a Lestrimelitta robber bee inside, perched on the tulle at the top of the tent. Without hesitating, he grabbed it and crushed it between his fingers. I was impressed by his speed and assertiveness. At the same time, I regretted not grabbing the bee myself and setting it aside to film for our episode. It had all happened very quickly.

Four months after we filmed his bees, Emilio told me they’re doing fine. He said that visits from robber bees are normal when he harvests honey, which is why he and Salustia work fast to collect the honey, store it and close up the bee boxes.   

More Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Photos  

This sign at Emilio Pérez’s house in northeastern Oaxaca state, Mexico, welcomes people to his native bee meliponary. A meliponary is a collection of hives of stingless bees. Each of these stacked wooden boxes, which Pérez designed, holds a colony of Melipona beecheii bees. He keeps around 80 hives of four different species of native stingless bees. (Rosa Tuirán/KQED)

Deep Look producer Gabriela Quirós holds beekeeper Emilio Pérez’s cat Loreto to prevent it from tangling with our gear. (Rosa Tuirán/KQED)

Producer Gabriela Quirós watches Melipona beecheii stingless bees on a monitor as Deep Look cinematographer Josh Cassidy films them returning to their nest with their legs loaded with plant resin. (Rosa Tuirán/KQED)

Beekeeper Emilio Pérez in front of his boxes of Scaptotrigona pectoralis and Scaptotrigona mexicana stingless bees in northeastern Oaxaca state, Mexico. (Rosa Tuirán/KQED)

Emilio Pérez holds up a box of Melipona beecheii bees so that Josh can film their honey pots and the brood cells that hold their offspring. Pérez opened the box to collect some of his bees’ honey and to move the brood cells to a new box, after this one was damaged by termites.  (Gabriela Quirós/KQED)

Deep Look cinematographer Josh Cassidy, beekeeper Emilio Pérez, and producers Gabriela Quirós and Rosa Tuirán in front of some of Pérez’s 80 colonies of native stingless bees in northeastern Oaxaca state, Mexico. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

Beekeeper Emilio Pérez poses with the products he sells: bottles of honey from his Melipona beecheii stingless bees; small bottles containing a liquid he prepares with plant resins his bees collected; jars of pollen mixed with honey, and bags of cardamom seeds. He sells the honey, resin and pollen products to treat ailments like sore throats and to aid in the healing of wounds.  Cardamom is a spice. (Rosa Tuirán/KQED) 

Deep Look cinematographer Josh Cassidy and producers Rosa Tuirán and Gabriela Quirós stop at a gas station on their way to northeastern Oaxaca state, Mexico. (Josh Cassidy/KQED)

And, if you can’t get enough of bees, Gabriela has also produced many of our other bee episodes. Check out our special bees and pollinators playlist.