Sugar syrup outperforms conspecific honey syrup in colony growth of a stingless bee species

Abstract In meliponiculture, ensuring proper nutritional development of colonies requires that hives be located near abundant bee pasture areas. However, during periods of resource scarcity, naturally available food may be insufficient to meet colony demands. To mitigate these shortages, food supplementation is a common practice among stingless beekeepers, with homemade sugar–water syrup being the most widely used. However, to date, limited research has compared such artificial syrups with natural syrups prepared from the honey of the same species. We hypothesized that natural honey syrup would promote greater colony growth than inverted sugar due to its higher nutritional value, without compromising colony health. Six colonies of Tetragonisca fiebrigi were used to evaluate and compare colony development under each supplementation method. Colonies were equally divided into a treatment group receiving natural honey syrup and a control group receiving sugar–water syrup. Feeding was carried out for 11 weeks, after which statistical analyses were performed on colony growth and food consumption. Additionally, 15 newly emerged workers from each colony were collected for intertegular distance measurements as a proxy for morphological development. The food consumption and analyses of intertegular distance revealed no statistically significant differences between treatments. Contrary to our hypothesis, sugar–water–fed colonies exhibited nearly threefold greater weight gain after 11 weeks, suggesting that artificial syrup may offer equal or superior nutritional and economic advantages for meliponiculture. However, further studies are needed to evaluate whether other colony and bee parameters remain unchanged or show improved performance when supplemented with sugar syrup.