Kelulut

How to recognise it

Medium for a stingless bee at 6 to 8 mm, black with a robust build and clear wings. Noticeably larger than the Tetragonula species kept alongside it.

• A prominent dark resin entrance tube, often trumpet-shaped and sticky.
• Larger and heavier than the tiny Tetragonula sharing the same apiaries.

Body length 5–9 mm (typically 7 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Eusocial, colony survives the winter

Overlapping generations, division of labour, and a colony that persists through winter as a cluster. Honey bees, and the reason they store honey at all.

Colony size at peak

3,000–20,000 individuals

Colony lifespan

Perennial.

Winter

No winter; year-round activity in the equatorial tropics.

Castes

Queen, Worker, Male

Nesting

Existing cavities and tubes; Resin-lined cavities

Nests in hollow logs and takes readily to sawn log hives and boxes, which is precisely why it became the industry species rather than one of its neighbours.

Carries pollen

Corbicula (pollen basket) on the hind leg

On the wing

January to December

Year-round in the equatorial tropics, with output following rainfall and flowering.

Lifecycle

1. 1Mass provisioningStandard meliponine provisioning in clustered cerumen brood cells.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Lowland tropical forest, plantation, orchard and village garden.

Distribution

Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo, southern Thailand and the Philippines.

Behaviour

Forages over a few hundred metres and recruits by scent trail. Colonies build large volumes of cerumen, which is itself a harvested product.

Pollination role

Stocked deliberately in Malaysian and Thai orchards for rambutan, mango, coconut and starfruit pollination, where fruit set improves measurably with colonies present.

Honey

Stores small quantities, occasionally harvested

One to three litres a year from a strong colony — high for a meliponine and still a fraction of a honey bee hive. Malaysia has written a national kelulut honey standard because the Apis standard does not fit.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

The foundation of a commercial meliponiculture sector that grew from almost nothing since the 2000s, driven as much by orchard pollination contracts as by honey.

Management

Kept in sawn logs and modular boxes, propagated by division, and harvested by syringe or vacuum from individual pots.

Conservation

Wild colonies depend on lowland forest hollows, which oil palm and pulpwood conversion is removing. Managed colonies are now far more numerous than wild ones in parts of Malaysia.