Stingless bees from the Amazon became the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world. Supporters hope the breakthrough will catalyze similar steps to protect bees elsewhere.
This means that in a vast area of the Peruvian Amazon, the long-neglected native rainforest bees, which, unlike their cousins the European honey bees, do not have stingers, are now allowed to exist and thrive.
Cultivated by indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian times, stingless bees are believed to be key rainforest pollinators, maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem health.
But they are facing a deadly combination of climate change, deforestation and pesticides, as well as competition from European bees, and scientists and activists are racing against time to get the stingless bees added to international red lists.
Constanza Prieto, Latin American director of the Earth Law Center, who worked on the campaign, said: “This order marks a turning point in our relationship with nature: it makes stingless bees visible, recognizes them as subjects with rights, and affirms their important role in preserving ecosystems.”
The world-first regulations passed in two Peruvian regions over the past few months are the result of a research and advocacy campaign led by Rosa Vázquez Espinoza, founder of Amazon Research Internacional, who has spent the past several years traveling the Amazon to work with indigenous peoples and document bees.
Espinoza, a biological chemist, first began researching bees in 2020 after a colleague asked her to analyze their honey, which had been used during the pandemic in Indigenous communities where Covid drugs were in short supply. She was stunned conclusions.
“I saw hundreds of drug molecules, like molecules that are known to have some kind of biological healing properties,” Espinoza recalls. “And this variety was really wild—these molecules are known to have anti-inflammatory or antiviral, antibacterial, antioxidant and even anti-cancer effects.”
Espinosa, who wrote the book, Spirit of the Rainforesttalking about her work in the Amazon, she began leading expeditions to learn more about stingless bees, working with indigenous people to document traditional methods for finding and raising the insects, and collecting their honey.
Found in tropical regions around the world, stingless bees are a class that includes a number of species and are the oldest bee species on the planet. About half of the world's 500 known species live in the Amazon, where they are responsible for pollinating more than 80% of the flora, including crops such as cocoa, coffee and avocados.
They also have deep cultural and spiritual significance for the indigenous people of the Ashaninka forest and Squeeze-Squeeze peoples. “In the stingless bees live traditional indigenous knowledge passed down from the time of our grandparents,” said Apu Cesar Ramos, EcoAshaninka President of the Ashaninka Community Reserve. “The merciless bee has been around since time immemorial and reflects our coexistence with the rainforest.”
Early on, Espinoza began hearing reports that bees were becoming increasingly difficult to find. “We talked extensively to different members of the community, and the first thing they said, which they still do to this day, was, ‘I can’t see my bees anymore. I used to have to walk 30 minutes into the jungle to find them. Now it takes me hours.”
Her chemical analysis also yielded some alarming results. Traces of pesticides appeared in the honey of stingless bees, despite being kept in areas far from industrial agriculture.
Lack of awareness about stingless bees makes it difficult to obtain funding for research, Espinoza said. So at the same time that field research began, she and her colleagues began advocating for recognition of the insects both in Peru and within the International Union for the Protection of Animals. Saving nature (IUCN).
For many years, the only bee species with official recognition in Peru were European honey bees, brought to the continent by colonizers in the 1500s.
“It's almost created a vicious circle. I can't give you funding because you're not on the list, but you can't even get on the list because you don't have the data. You don't have the funding to get it.” In 2023, they officially began a project to map the extent and ecology of bees, “because by then we had already talked to the IUCN team and some government officials in Peru and realized that this data was critical.”
Mapping revealed a link between deforestation and the decline of stinging bees – research that contributed to the passage of the law in 2024. recognition of stingless bees as native bees of Peru. The law was a crucial step because Peruvian law requires protection of native species.
Dr. Cesar Delgado, a researcher at the Institute for Research on the Peruvian Amazon, called the stingless bees “the main pollinators” of the Amazon, contributing not only to plant reproduction, but also to biodiversity, forest conservation and global food security.
But their research also revealed something else.
An experiment conducted in Brazil in the 1950s to create a strain that would produce more honey in tropical conditions led to the creation of the Africanized honey bee, a variety that was also more aggressive, earning them the fearsome nickname “African killer bees.” Now, Espinosa and her colleagues have discovered, these Africanized bees have begun to outcompete the comparatively gentle stingless bees in their own habitat.
During an expedition to the Amazonian highlands of Junin in southern Peru, they met Elizabeth, an Ashaninka elder, who told them about what Espinosa said was “the most striking example [bee] Species competition like nothing I've ever seen.”
Leading a semi-nomadic life in a remote part Avireri Vraem Biosphere ReserveElizabeth kept bees and raised them in the forest near her home. But she told how her merciless bees were driven out by Africanized bees that violently attacked her whenever she visited.
“Honestly, I was so scared,” Espinoza said. “Because I had heard about it before, but not to this extent. There was horror in her eyes, and she kept looking at me directly and asking, 'How do I get rid of them?' I hate them. I want them to disappear.”
The municipality of Satipo, where Elizabeth lives, became the first to pass an ordinance giving legal rights to stingless bees in October. Through Aviriri Vraem Nature Reserve Bees will now have the right to exist and thrive, to maintain healthy populations, to healthy habitats free from pollution, to environmentally stable climate conditions and, most importantly, to legal representation in cases of threat or harm. The second municipality, Nauta, in the Loreto region, approved a resolution to this effect on Monday, December 22.
These decisions are precedents that have no analogues throughout the world. Prieto said they would establish a mandate requiring policies for the survival of bees, “including habitat restoration and restoration, strict regulation of pesticides and herbicides, climate change mitigation and adaptation, the promotion of scientific research, and the adoption of the precautionary principle as the guiding basis for all decisions that may affect their survival.”
Avaaz's global petition calling on Peru to pass the law nationwide has already attracted more than 386,000 signatures, and there is also strong interest from groups in Bolivia, the Netherlands and the US who want to follow the example of municipalities as a basis for protecting the rights of their own wild bees.
Ramos said: “The merciless bee provides us with food and medicine, and this needs to be talked about so that more people will protect it. For this reason, this law, which protects bees and their rights, represents an important step forward for us, as it gives value to the lived experiences of our indigenous peoples and rainforests.”
