Country

Ecuador

Ecuador may eventually be better known in Honey Chronicles for native stingless bees than for ordinary honeybees. More than 200 stingless-bee species have been identified in the country, and the southern dry forests around Puyango, Loja have become an unusually organized center of meliponiculture. Three rural parishes created the Mancomunidad Las Meliponas in 2015, while producers formed ASOPROMELPUY to manage native bees and honey. The project has since grown into Miel por Bosque — Honey for Forests, explicitly linking income from honey with keeping dry forest standing. In 2026, Puyango became home to Ecuador's first comprehensive Native Bee Center, while the larger program reported more than 600 bee caretakers managing about 5,000 native hives across five provinces. This is not merely another regional honey business. Ecuador is beginning to build a system in which bee species, forest conservation, community knowledge, honey and geography are all connected.