I'm back! In Kalimantan, that is. (Kalimantan is the Indonesian name for Borneo, and I'm in Palangkaraya, a city in the province of Central Kalimantan). I arrived in Jakarta on October 1st, and then gave a presentation on my research at the department of zoology at Universitas Nasional on October 3rd. The presentation went well, and Drs. Tatang, Suci, and Astri were excellent hosts!
Lunch with Tatang, Aci & Suci!
From Jakarta I flew to Palangkaraya, where I've spent the last 10 days finalizing visas and permits before heading to the field. About a dozen official documents later, I'm planning on heading to Tuanan tomorrow. While waiting for permits, I was invited to visit University of Palangkaraya's (UPR's) meliponine apiculture experiment:
The Department of Forestry at UPR and The Center for International Cooperation in Sustainable Management of Tropical Peatlands (CIMTROP, also at based at UPR) are conducting research on sustainable management and restoration of peat swamp forests. This research is really timely... there are something like 10 million hectares of logged, drained, decaying, and burnt degraded peatlands in Central Kalimantan, and nobody knows what the trajectory of these landscapes will be.
As part of this effort, UPR is supporting a student-run project to keep native stingless (meliponine) bees for honey. The keeping of stingless bees for honey is ancient practice, found in many indigenous communities across the global tropics. Meliponine bees are small, industrious, and don't sting! The species managed at UPR is Heterotrigona itama,
Heterotrigona itama, courtesy of Chui Shao Xiong
known locally as Kelulut, is a relatively large stingless bee that can be induced to make its colonies in hollowed out tree stumps or boxes. The harvesting of its honey can be a bit tedious, because the honey is stored in big wax pouches instead of in the comb, as is found in honey bee (Apis spp.) hives, making automated harvest impossible
The incredible architecture of a H. itama nest! You can't see the brood comb in this image, but it's in there and it looks like a miniature version of honey bee brood comb.
Harvesting is well worth the effort, however, as the honey is delicious! It tastes a bit like a delicate multifloral honey you or I might find in a store at home, but with an acidic, tangy twist. And with thousands of bees in a colony, they make a lot of it - mature colonies can produce more than a liter per month, and many colonies can be placed together in the same location.
UPR has about 20 H. itama colonies at this location.
If these practices can be scaled-up and distributed to villagers and small landholders in degraded areas, that would be really cool! The honey already has a decent market domestically, and considering how unique and delicious it is, I can't see why it couldn't develop a global market. It could provide a decent additional income source in rural areas, and an income source that encourages sustainable management of the landscape (the bees need trees and flowers to thrive!).
Anyway, enough about that for now. The next update will be from Tuanan, where my project will be to study the pollination of the important fruit trees in the genus Syzygium, and see who pollinates what and what bees are present generally in Bornean peat swamp forest.
A flowering Syzygium aqueum in Palangkaraya.