Do Bees Eat Meat?

Do Bees Eat Meat?

Do bees eat meat? Meet carrion-eating vulture bees that live in Central and South America and feed off dead carcasses to produce meat honey for baby bees to grow.

When we think of bees, we usually think happy thoughts. Honey, sweetness, pollination, sunshine, flowery meadows … the whole world of bees seems pleasant and charming.

Mostly.

Like everything in the animal kingdom, there are exceptions to the rule. So … meet the vulture bees.

Where Do Vulture Bees Live?

As the name implies, vulture bees are carrion eaters. Within the Trigona genus of stingless bees, three species — which primarily reside in Central and South America — eat solely dead carcasses. While there are some species of bees that forage for meat along with nectar and pollen, only the three species of vulture bees exist exclusively on a diet of meat. Being stingless, they can’t hunt; instead, they eat dead and rotting animals. Although one species had been described as long as two centuries ago, they weren’t rediscovered to be exclusively carrion-eaters until 1982.

Surviving on carrion is no joke. Decomposing flesh is a minefield of diseases, and when microbes are consumed by a predator, the results can be deadly (think salmonella). And yet many animals are carrion-eaters, thanks to an internal cocktail of gut microbes that protect the host.

When scientists examined the gut bacteria of vulture bees, they found a rich assortment of acid-loving bacteria, similar to those found in other carrion eaters, such as vultures and hyenas. These bacteria protect the bees from pathogens that exist on carrion. These microbiomes include Lactobacillus bacteria, commonly found in fermented foods like sourdough, as well as Carnobacterium, known to help digest flesh. In short, these microbes literally “pickle the pathogen,” in the words of one scientist.

Their gut bacteria mean vulture bees are “obligate necrophages,” meaning they couldn’t exploit flower resources even if they wanted to. They’re confined to carrion.

Because tearing meat off a carcass is more difficult than harvesting pollen, vulture bees have developed strong and powerful mandibles with special tooth-like points that help strip meat from the bones. Meat is used as a replacement for pollen, which honeybees eat for protein.

Vulture bees have been recorded foraging from more than 75 different species of animals. Vulture bees can smell a carcass from a long distance away. Just as honeybees alert other bees to a good source of pollen, vulture bees alert hive members to a carcass by releasing a unique pheromone. Vulture bees will also guard their find and reduce competition for the resource by chasing away flies, reserving the carcass for their own hive.

The methods used to harvest carrion are efficient. The bees enter the carcass through the eyes, nose, or mouth, and begin stripping the meat. They can remove all the flesh, down to the skeleton, in a few hours or a couple of days, depending on the size of the animal. Speed is of the essence; it reduces competition from other carrion-eaters.

carrion-eater-bees
by Adobestock/hilmawan nurhatmadi

The forager bees consume the meat on-site, using a special digestive enzyme that mixes with the meat compounds to break it down into a “slurry,” which is stored in the bee’s crop. After returning to the hive, the forager bees transfer their load to worker bees, who’ll process the meat and secrete the food through hypopharyngeal glands. (These are the glands honeybees use to produce royal jelly.)

Vulture bees live in colonies of several thousand individuals presided over by a single queen. Their preferred nesting locations are in high trees, making access difficult. They can be very defensive of their food and nests. The same strong mandibles needed to tear meat can also be used to deliver a nasty bite, which can cause skin to erupt in painful sores because of blister-causing secretions in their jaws. However, vulture bees aren’t typically aggressive toward humans.

Why would vulture bees evolve in the first place? Why not stick to flower resources like other bees? A large reason appears to be their development in resource-poor areas where flowers aren’t as abundant, or where competition for nectar is intense. Notably, vulture bees are the only bees in the world that use food resources not produced by plants. Since vulture bees aren’t capable of carrying and storing pollen, there are no pollen stores in their nests.

Vulture bees do produce honey, or at least a honey-like substance. It’s made of processed proteins rather than nectar. The bees store the meat honey in their hives in special chambers that act as a meat locker that’s sealed off for two weeks until it’s “cured.” At this point, the meat honey is fed to the young, who need protein to grow. However, the fine details of in-hive processing are still being studied.

Vulture Bee Honey Taste

Counterintuitively, the honey of vulture bees is edible, though not as sweet to human taste buds as conventional honey. The taste has been described as smoky, intense, even salty, or (again, counterintuitively) uniquely sweet. Some people find the flavor “somewhat addictive,” while others say the taste is unpleasant.

There are no commercial possibilities for marketing vulture bee honey. Not only is the taste less palatable than other honey versions, but vulture bees — living in a resource-poor area — struggle to produce enough honey for themselves as it is. They have no surplus. Extracting the honey would doom the colony.

Is Vulture Bee Honey Safe to Eat?

Additionally, because it’s made and stored in proximity to rotting flesh, scientists are concerned it could contain dangerous bacteria toxic to humans. At any rate, the honey hasn’t been tested as safe for human consumption. Any advertisement for “vulture-bee honey” is likely a scam. Vulture bees are a marvel of nature and are a prime illustration of how animals can expand to fill an available niche.

Vulture bees are part of the rich diversity of the animal kingdom, whose habits and lifestyle are to be celebrated as part of the whole.


Patrice Lewis is a wife, mother, homesteader, homeschooler, author, blogger, columnist, and speaker. An advocate of simple living and self-sufficiency, she has practiced and written about self-reliance and preparedness for almost 30 years. She’s experienced in homestead animal husbandry and small-scale dairy production, food preservation and canning, country relocation, home-based businesses, homeschooling, personal money management, and food selfsufficiency. Follow her website www.PatriceLewis.com or blog www.Rural-Revolution.com.


Originally published in the November/December 2024 issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.

Sources

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/24/ americas/meat-eating-bees-scn/ index.html
https://www.howtogettingridofbees. com/what-are-vulture-bees-is-theirhoney-edible
https://entomologytoday. org/2022/01/19/vulture-bees-gutmicrobiomes
https://bloomandbumble.com/ vulture-bees-a-complete-guide
https://learnbees.com/vulture-bees
https://misfitanimals.com/bees/ vulture-bee
https://scitechdaily.com/meateating-vulture-bees-sport-acidic-gutsand-an-extra-tooth-for-biting-flesh
https://www.smithsonianmag. com/smart-news/vulture-bees-havespecialized-microbiomes-that-aidtheir-taste-in-meat-180979131
https://www.businessinsider.com/ vulture-bees-feed-on-rotting-meatinstead-of-pollen-2021-11
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8609352

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