Honey compositional convergence and the parallel domestication of social bees

Background/Question/Methods

Honey has been an integral part of the human diet since the Stone Age. In Eurasia, the domestication efforts have focused on the indigenous Apis species whereas in Mesoamerica, honey was primarily sourced from a wide taxonomic range of species belonging to another tribe of social bees in the family Apidae, namely the stingless bees (tribe Meliponini). The details of bee domestication have been refined to the present day in most regions of the world, and although honey bees have been imported in the Mesoamerica since the 16th century, meliponiculture (i.e., beekeeping with stingless bees) is still a relatively widely developed practise in rural areas of this region. Today, the extent to which the compositional convergence in Apis and stingless bee honeys has driven the domestication of different bee species independently in different regions of the world for the provision of nutrient-rich carbohydrates has received little attention. In this study, we address this gap by using a sampling design that combines state-of-the-art honey profiling using H1 NMR spectroscopy with the collection of honeys from both domesticated and non-domesticated bee species in the tribes Apini and Meliponini, both in Mesoamerica (Mexico) and Asia (Thailand).

Results/Conclusions

Our results show that, irrespective of the region of the world considered, domesticated stingless bees produce honey whose compositional profiles (i) converge with those of the domesticated and non-domesticated Apis species, and (ii) diverge away from honeys produced by non-domesticated stingless bees. Honeys of domesticated stingless bees were particularly characterized by a higher proportion (in %) of sugars, and a lower level of fermentation markers. Our results provide evidence for the first time that the search for natural sweeteners in the environment by our ancestors in different regions of the world led to the parallel and independent domestication of social bees producing honeys with convergent compositional profile.