HoneyHQ

Vulture bees

Trigona hypogea and allied speciesEusocial, colony survives the winterStores small quantities, occasionally harvested

A group rather than a single species — Three closely related Neotropical stingless bee species — Trigona hypogea, T. necrophaga and T. crassipes — are the only bees known to have abandoned pollen entirely. General statements below are statements about the group.

The only bees in the world that eat meat. Three Neotropical stingless bee species have given up pollen altogether and provision their nests with carrion instead, landing on dead animals, cutting flesh with specialised teeth, and carrying it home to be processed into a protein store. They have lost the pollen baskets their relatives use and gained a gut microbiome closer to a vulture's than to a bee's.

Can it sting?

No functional sting, as with all stingless bees. They defend by biting and, in some Trigona species, by applying caustic mandibular secretions that can raise blisters — which is unpleasant and not a sting.

How to recognise it

Small dark stingless bees, superficially like their pollen-eating relatives, with one telling difference: the hind legs lack a functional corbicula, because there is no pollen to carry. The mandibles carry additional teeth for cutting flesh.

  • Found on carrion rather than on flowers — which no other bee is.
  • Hind legs without a functional pollen basket.
  • Additional mandibular teeth used for cutting.
  • Confined to the Neotropics, from Panama south into Brazil.

Body length 4–7 mm (typically 5 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
1,000–10,000 individuals
Colony lifespan
Perennial, as with other stingless bees.
Winter
No winter. Colonies persist year-round in the tropics.
Castes
Queen, Workers, Males
Nesting
Resin-lined cavities; Existing cavities and tubes

Nests in tree cavities and in the ground, with the usual meliponine architecture of brood comb and storage pots. The pots hold honey and a protein store derived from carrion rather than the pollen store every other bee builds.

Carries pollen
Carries no pollen for young
On the wing
January to December

Lifecycle

  1. Carrion location and recruitmentWorkers locate a carcass, often within hours of death, and recruit nestmates. They cut into the flesh — usually through the eyes or an existing wound — and feed on it directly.
  2. ProcessingThe flesh is carried home internally and converted into a glandular secretion that is stored in pots and fed to the brood. The bees do not simply store meat; they process it, and their gut microbiome contains acid-loving bacteria related to those found in vultures and hyenas.
  3. Brood rearingCells are mass-provisioned with the processed protein store, sealed, and the larva develops on it.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat
Lowland tropical forest in Central and South America.
Distribution
Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil.
Behaviour
Everything about them is a reversal of the usual bee description. Bees are defined as wasps that turned vegetarian; these are bees that turned back. They locate carcasses rapidly, compete aggressively with flies and other scavengers, and are essentially absent from flowers except for their own nectar.
Pollination role
Effectively none. Having abandoned pollen, they visit flowers only for nectar and carry no pollen deliberately. They are a genuine exception to the rule that bees are pollinators, and worth knowing about for exactly that reason.

Negligible. These are bees that do not pollinate, which is a useful corrective to the assumption that the two words are interchangeable.

What it forages on
Visits flowers only for its own nectar. No plant provisions its brood, which is true of no other bee outside the cleptoparasites.

Honey

Stores small quantities, occasionally harvested

They do store honey, made from nectar in the ordinary way, in the usual meliponine pots. It is reportedly sweet and perfectly palatable, which people generally find harder to believe than the carrion feeding.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it
Almost none beyond scientific interest, and the interest is considerable. Their gut microbiome — dominated by acid-producing bacteria of the kind found in carrion-feeding vertebrates — is a striking case of a dietary shift being enabled by a change in symbionts rather than in the animal itself.
Conservation
Poorly known, and dependent on intact lowland tropical forest like the rest of the Neotropical meliponine fauna.

Sources

  • The Bees of the World — Johns Hopkins University Press (2007) · Textbook
  • HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

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