Country

Bolivia

Bolivia immediately changes the meaning of “honeybee.” In the Chaco of Chuquisaca, Guaraní families still raise native stingless bees, particularly the small *señorita bee, Tetragonisca angustula**, alongside Africanized Apis mellifera. Traditional colonies were sometimes kept in hollow gourds; modern meliponiculturists increasingly use wooden boxes that make colonies easier to manage and divide. This tradition is now intersecting with serious science. In 2025 Bolivia opened its first Honey Library in Monteagudo, built around 68 laboratory-analyzed samples of both Apis* and stingless-bee honey. Researchers are now working to identify the plants behind those honeys. An association of hundreds of women meliponiculturists has also formed across dozens of Chaco communities. Bolivia therefore offers HC something fundamentally different from a normal commercial honey country: multiple bee species, multiple honey chemistries and an Indigenous practice becoming part of a modern scientific archive.