Tiny stingless bees just gave Brazil's coffee farmers a 67% bigger harvest

Arabica coffee has long been treated as a crop that pollinates itself and needs no help from insects. A field study on six farms in Minas Gerais and São Paulo put that idea to the test by placing managed colonies of a native stingless bee, Scaptotrigona depilis, among the coffee bushes. Branches within about 50 metres of a colony averaged 0.50 kilograms of coffee, against 0.30 kilograms on branches roughly 250 metres away — 67% more, counted across 360 harvested branches and published in Frontiers in Bee Science. The colonies, each home to around 10,000 workers, also stayed healthy: brood production and survival were the same on conventional and organic farms, even though low levels of a widely used insecticide showed up in leaves and in the bees' stored food. Because these bees cannot sting, they are safe around farm workers, and the researchers say renting colonies to growers — already common for apples and melons in Brazil — could work for coffee too.

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