Foraging selectivity of melipona beecheii (hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponini) in the Yucatan Peninsula

Stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are a group of bees that include about 500 tropical and subtropical species. Of the 46 species reported in Mexico, 16 are in the Yucatan Peninsula. The stingless bees are insects with social habits, feeding of floral resources and pollinate a wide variety of wild and cultivated plants. In this sense, they are essential in the recovery and maintenance of plant communities of terrestrial ecosystems for its role in plant-animal interaction. Despite this, in the Yucatan Peninsula is relatively little is known about the foraging behavior of these wild stingless bees, Melipona beecheii particularly. Research carried out in other tropical regions of the world show that floral resources that score high on the visit and foraging selectivity of stingless bees, belong mainly to Anacardiaceae, Cyperaceae, Moraceae and Solanaceae families. Conversely families as such as Rutaceae, Melostomaceae, Umbelliferae, Fabaceae and Compositae, recorded a lesser rate. These reported data allow us to extrapolate those stingless bees particularly the M. beecheii species has a selectivity of foraging especially these plant families, because they are present in the different types of vegetation that exist in the Yucatan Peninsula.