Ethno-medicinal uses and cultural importance of stingless bees and their hive products in several ethnic communities of Bhutan

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3427778/v1

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Ethno-medicinal uses and cultural importance of stingless bees and their hive products in several ethnic communities of Bhutan

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3427778/v1

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published 10 Apr, 2024

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Background: Indigenous and non-indigenous people in wet subtropical and warm temperate areas of Bhutan share an intricate relationship with stingless bees for diverse purposes including ethno-medicinal uses. Stingless bees are deeply associated with social, economic, cultural, and spiritual importance. Bhutan’s cultural practices exhibit a lot of connection to the environment. For instance, stingless bee honey is used routinely to treat the common cold, cough, and sore throat. These resources are usually regarded as a form of traditional knowledge and form an important part of ethnic culture.

Methods: We conducted ethnographic research across the southern, western, and eastern regions of Bhutan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with stingless beekeepers, and honey collectors from wild and traditional healers to document the ethno-medicinal uses and cultural importance of stingless bees.

Results: We documented 22 different uses of stingless bee honey in food, medicine, veterinary medicine, crafts, beliefs, and religious purposes. We calculated the relative cultural importance (RCI) of stingless bees among the ethnic communities of Bhutan. We found that stingless bees and their hive products are significantly more important to the Hindu culture communities than other ethnic communities in Bhutan. This finding is consistent with the data in other countries and supports the dependence of Hindu culture ethnic communities on natural resources in their everyday life. All participant communities largely exploit these bees through destructive extraction practices. They often find the natural nests in nearby forests, transfer them as a log hive to their backyards, and practice traditional meliponiculture. Therefore, we discuss the future direction of meliponiculture for the sustainable use of these stingless bees in Bhutan.

Conclusion: The ethnic communities of Bhutan use stingless bees for various purposes and the local knowledge is persistent. Many studies on medicinal plants and their uses have been documented in Bhutan, however ethno-biological knowledge on stingless bee and their hive products remain unexplored. Therefore, significant efforts should be made to address the ethno-medicinal, ecological, biological, and industrial perspectives of meliponiculture in Bhutan. This research paper will complement the national inventory of bee resources and traditional knowledge to manage them sustainably in Bhutan.

Meliponiculture

Relative Cultural Importance

Traditional Knowledge

Bee forms a major part of pollinator communities with socio-cultural, economic, and ecological importance [1, 2]. Amongst social bees, the stingless bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponini) are honey-making bees that are an integral part of many ethnic cultures, both past and present [3, 4]. They are deeply embedded in human culture and represent a natural source of food, crafts materials, medicine, and alternative sources of income [5–8]. Hence, it indicates a strong relationship with humans throughout history. Stingless bees primarily nest inside the forest cover [9] but several ethnic peoples around the globe practice an industrial beekeeping technique called “meliponiculture” [10, 11].

There are about 500 described species of stingless bees from the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world [7]. Stingless bees build a complex perennial colony, forage across varied landscapes, and are accountable for pollination of one-fourth of cultivated plants in the tropics and subtropics [12]. However, on-going habitat fragmentation [13] and other anthropogenic disturbances [14] negatively affect their diversity and abundance across the globe. It raises growing concerns about global food security, environmental sustainability, crop-based economies, and people’s livelihoods [15]. Although the Western Hemisphere of the New World, particularly Central America and South America are the major hub for stingless bees [1, 2, 16], the Eastern Hemisphere also constitutes 20% of them in Indo-Mayan and Australian regions [17]. Unlike the well-studied apiculture industry in terms of Apis species in the Eastern hemisphere [18], taxonomy and the practices of meliponiculture are under-sampled and poorly documented from several countries of the Indian sub-continent such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bhutan [19, 20].

Local traditional knowledge is a great resource for bee scientists and conservation biologists to uncover alternative conservation practices and to promote the status of the local pollinators [8, 21]. The ethnographic survey is considered an important tool, where melittologists can document critical information about stingless bees which is otherwise not incorporated in conservation policy [2]. The use of plants and animals in traditional medicines for healing practices has been common since the olden days by people all over the world, and the people of Bhutan are no exception. Most of the rural inhabitant communities of Bhutan primarily depend on natural resources for their basic needs such as food, medicine, fuel, and timber [22]. While cultural and ethno-biological data on stingless bees is available for several indigenous and non-indigenous populations across Asia, particularly in Nepal and India (8, 22), such information is scarce and not documented yet for the stingless bees of Bhutan [23].

Literature records on stingless bees from Bhutan only mentioned some aspects of systematics and distributional records, with scant details on their uses, cultural values, and other biological information. Two species of stingless bees, Tetragonula gressitti (Sakagami) and Lepidotrigona arcifera (Cockerell) were recently reported from Bhutan [24]. Local communities identify them as “Kalo Putka” (black color stingless bee) and “Poilo Putka” (yellow color stingless bee) respectively and keep them in traditional hives and use them in multiple forms of traditional medicines.

Integrating traditional knowledge in biological research can enrich the natural history of the species by adding a plethora of cultural information gathered from the people who have been living in proximity for centuries [22]. In addition, they might provide us with additional ecological and biological information. However, in Bhutan, much work has been done to document the traditional uses of medicinal plants and plant products [22, 23], but there is a definite lack of ethno-entomological works related to stingless bees. Moreover, rural-urban migration and immigration trends have been comparatively high in recent years and the young generation undervalue the traditional knowledge transmitted orally from their elders [25]. Therefore, it is crucial to document such traditional knowledge on ethno-medicinal uses and the cultural importance of stingless bees from Bhutan. Hence, we report for the first time the ethno-medicinal uses, cultural importance, and domestication of stingless bee species in different ethnic communities of Bhutan.

Study area

This study was conducted in five Dzongkhags (districts) and eight Gewogs (provinces) within the eastern, western, and southern Bhutan. Chhukha, Mongar, Zhemgang, Wangduephodrang, and Sarpang are the districts covered in this study. Our informants were from Logchina, Jurmey, Shingkhar, and Athang, one Gewog each from the Zhemgang, Chhukha, Mongar, and Wangduephodrang districts respectively, while informants from four Gewogs: Jangchubling, Jigmechoeling, Samtenling, and Singye were included in the Sarpang district (Fig. 1).

Ethno-zoological information collection

The field survey for this study was completed during the spring and summer of 2022 to document the ethno-zoological information and traditional meliponicultural practices adopted by different ethnic communities in Bhutan. The network of informants (beekeepers) was built by the recommendations of Gups (Head of the Gewog), Mangmis (Gup assistant), and the interviewees themselves by using the snowball-sampling method [26, 27]. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 55 informants from those five districts (Table 1). Interviewees ranged from 21 to 74 years (46.12 ± 14.84) in the age that includes 50 males (90.9%) and 5 females (9.1%). Our interviewees either kept stingless bees in their backyard or practiced collecting stingless bees and their products from wild colonies they found in their natural habitat. They were from nine different ethnic communities: the Sharchop, the Olep, the Bhawan, the Gurung, the Kheangpa, the Tamang, the Monger, the Rai, and the Ngalops. Among the interviewees, twenty-nine were from Sarpang, ten were from Athang consisting of both Oleps and Ngalops, seven were from Mongar, five were from Wangduephodrang, and four were from Zhemgang.

At each location, we observed the stingless bee nests with the assistance of local people (Fig. 2B) and gathered data on the common names, nesting substrates, management practices, and ethno-medicinal uses. Interviews were recorded by using a Sony ICD-UX570 voice recorder. To document the specific details from the communities, the senior author (TG) who is a native of Bhutan adopted a participant observation method [28], where he facilitated the interviews with informal conversations. All the information collected from interviews was translated and transcribed for the data analysis.

Table 1

Geographical information of the study sites in Bhutan where we conducted interviews with the stingless beekeepers.
Dzongkhag	Gewog	Coordinates		Elevation (m)
Dzongkhag	Gewog	Latitude	Longitude	Elevation (m)
Sarpang	Jangchubling	90.329298	27.047724	1848
	Jigmechoeling	90.344170	27.003140	967
	Samtenling	90.427960	26.924060	638
	Singye	90.204752	26.847440	301
Chhukha	Logchina	89.390660	26.940370	1027
Zhemgang	Shingkhar	90.947240	27.245140	1176
Wangduephordang	Athang	90.184973	27.192946	1545
Monger	Jurmey	91.250710	27.089006	1188

Quantitative evaluation of ethno-zoological data

We analyzed the ethno-medicinal uses and cultural importance of stingless bees and their hive products used by the different communities in Bhutan by grouping all the mentioned uses into several categories (#C) such as food, medicine, veterinary medicine, crafts, beliefs, and religious uses. Within those categories, specific uses (#U) of stingless bees and their hive products are sub-grouped (Table 1)

A “researcher tally” method as described by Philip (1996) [29] was employed to group specific uses of stingless bees and their hive products into several categories. To calculate the relative cultural importance (RCI) index, we followed Gonzalez et al. (2018) [30], a modified index from Bennet & Prance (2000) [31] used to calculate the RCI of medicinal plants. The index is calculated based on the sum of the proportion of the number of use categories (C) and the proportion of the number of specific uses (U) multiplied by 50 ([C + U] × 50). The output of the index is expressed on a scale from 0 to 100. Kruskal-Walli’s test and Dunn’s multiple comparison tests were used to assess the relative differences in the RCI among different ethnic communities [8].

The National Biodiversity Centre, the national focal agency for inventory and documentation of traditional knowledge associated with biological resources reviewed this study and provided approval both for research and publication. The voucher specimens collected in this study were curated and deposited in the National Biodiversity Centre, Bhutan

Common names of stingless bee in Bhutan

The ethnic communities in Bhutan recognize stingless bees with varying common names. The people of western Bhutan (Ngalops) called them Chuepjaam or Tabjaam, while the people of eastern Bhutan (Sharchop) called them Ringbu (‘Ring means the entrance tube, Bu means insect; thus, Ringbu means insect with entrance tube’). The people of Zhemgang (Kheangpa) recognize them as Chulingma. Stingless bee in Southern Bhutan is popularly identified as Puttka in general but different communities have specific local names: Lepiditrigona arcifera is known as Poilo Puttka (Yellow Stingless Bees) in Jangchubling while it is called Sheto Puttka (White Stingless Bess) in Jigmechoeling, Logchina, and Singye. On the other hand, Tetragonula gressiti is identified as Kalo Puttka (Black Stingless Bees). Both species are in use for medicine and other purposes without any distinction.

Ethno-medicinal uses

We recorded 22 specific uses of stingless bees across all the ethnic communities and grouped them into six categories of use adopted in this study (Table 2). Both species are used for medicine and other purposes throughout the country. In general, Kalo Puttka has a wider habitat range in the country and visits significantly more flower species to collect pollen and nectar compared to white species [24]. The local people believe that the honey collected by the black species has a higher medicinal value compared to the white species. Nevertheless, both species are widely used for medicine and other purposes in the country. Bhawan and Rai communities consume both pollen and honey as food, while Gurung and Tamang people use honey only. Most informants reported that they consume stingless bee honey orally or use raw honey as an ingredient of traditional medicine in many instances. 25% of respondents reported that they add ingredients such as lemon juice, ginger, and Apis honey to treat several illnesses (the common cold, tonsillitis, gastritis, common coughs, typhoid, allergies, etc.). Interestingly, the ethnic communities of southern Bhutan use honey as a massage oil to minimize the pain due to injuries and backaches due to the elderly. The informants also use honey to treat burns, fresh cuts or wounds, conjunctivitis, allergies, ringworms, and chickenpox (Table 2). The informants from southern Bhutan specifically mentioned that “they would burn a small portion of the entrance tube and inhale the smoke to treat dizziness and nausea.”

Bhawan and Rai people use honey to treat cattle diseases such as foot and mouth disease (FMD) and toe tip necrosis. They feed the raw honey mixed with pollen to treat FMD while they feed and apply raw honey to the infected area to treat toe tip necrosis. Additionally, Bhawan and Rai people from Sarpang and Chukhha regions use wax and resins as well. They use resin (propolis) as a sealing glue and wax is used to manufacture candles. One of the informants from Sarpang reported that, “the candles manufactured from the wax mixed with resins can last for 3 to 4 days”. Rai and Bhawan people have a tradition of pasting a small portion of the entrance tube around the machete before they leave their house for their daily business. It is believed to protect them from snake bites while they are working in agricultural fields or in the forests (Fig. 3B). Rai communities practiced pasting a small portion of the entrance tube on the door (Figs. 3A-B) and making an amulet (Buti) (Fig. 3C) which they believed to protect them from the evil spirit. It illustrates the diverse and intricate historical relationship between people and the stingless bee in different ethnic communities of Bhutan.

The several ethnic communities of Bhutan use the honey of stingless bees in their religious activities on several occasions. Rai people use the honey of stingless bees in Naya dhawta, a ritual associated with offering to new local deities. On the other hand, Bhawan people use honey in Satyanarayana puja and Puran (religious rituals for the recitation of the Hindu legends) to worship Lord Vishnu to fulfill their wishes and desires.

Table 2

Categories of use (#C), specific uses (#U), and frequency of uses (#F) documented for the stingless bee in eight ethnic communities in Bhutan. For each medicinal use, the type of bee product used is provided in parentheses. Abbreviations: E, entrance tube, H, honey; P, pollen; W, wax; and R, resins.
Categories of uses (#C)	Specific uses (#U)	Frequency (#F)
Food	Honey (H)	6
Food	Pollen (P)	4
Medicine	Common cough and cold (H)	31
	Stomach ulcer (H)	24
	Pain due to injuries (H)	23
	Conjunctivitis-applied (H)	22
	Burns in skin or cut (H	23
	Ringworms (H)	4
	Tonsil (H)	7
	Chickenpox (H)	4
	Nausea/ vomiting (E)	10
	Pneumonia (H)	9
	Gastritis (H)	12
Veterinary medicine	Food and mouth disease (H + P)	7
Veterinary medicine	Necrosis (H)	4
Crafts	Resin as a sealing glue in pots (R)	6
Crafts	Wax for manufacture candles (W)	5
Beliefs	Paste made up of entrance tube to protect from snake bite (E)	4
Beliefs	Amulets made up of entrance-tube paste to protect from the evil spirit (E)	15
Religious purpose	Puran ritual (H)	5
	Ritual related to offering local deities (H)	3
	Satyanarayana puja (H)	2

Frequency of uses

Among the interviewees, 17% reported consuming stingless bee honey as the source of food and 11% reported using pollen as a source of protein. Furthermore, 89% of the participants reported using stingless bee honey to treat common coughs and colds. Whereas 68% of the participants reported using stingless bee honey to treat stomach ulcers, 65% reported its use to treat pains due to injuries, and 62% reported its use to heal from conjunctivitis. Similarly, 65% of the respondents use it to treat skin burns and cut wounds, 11% of them use it to treat the ringworm infection, 20% of them use it for tonsilitis, and 11% of them use it for the treatment of the smallpox. It is also noteworthy to mention that 28%, 25%, and 34% of the informants use smokes from the entrance tube paste to treat nausea, pneumonia, and gastritis respectively.

In veterinary uses, 11% of the respondents use stingless bee honey to treat FMD in cattle and 11% for treating foot necrosis. 14% of our informants also use wax to prepare locally made candles and 17% of them use it to mend holes in cooking pots. 11% of the total respondents believe in pasting stingless bee entrance tubes on machetes to protect them from snake bites and 42% of them practice making amulets from bee products to ward off evil spirits. Finally, in the religious uses, 8% of the respondents use honey in Puran and 5% of them use in Satyanarayana Puja.

Relative Cultural Importance

The relative cultural importance index (RCI) ranged from 21.21 in the Sharchop and the Ngalop communities in east and west Bhutan to 95.45 in the Rai communities of southern Bhutan (Jangchubling, Jigmecheoling, Samtenling, and Logchina). The Bhawan and the Gurung people have moderate uses of stingless bees while the Tamang communities have intermediate uses of stingless bees. The Sharchop, the Khangpa, and the Ngalops have a relatively small number of respondents who use stingless bee products. We observed a significant difference in the relative cultural importance index among the Bhawan, the Rai, the Gurung, the Tamang, the Monger, and the Khangpa. Dunn’s pairwise test shows a significant difference between the eight ethnic communities (p = 0.04) (Fig. 4).

Domestication and sustainable use of stingless bees in Bhutan

Domestication of stingless bees is a rare activity in the western and eastern regions of Bhutan. According to the Buddhist perspective, it is considered a sin to harvest and consume honey. This explains no domestication of honeybees and stingless bees in those two regions of the country. Meanwhile, meliponiculture is more common in southern Bhutan and most of the households rear at least one or more colonies of stingless bees throughout the region. We recorded sixty domesticated colonies in different localities of southern Bhutan where the participant communities have been involved in meloponiculture since long time. Lepidotrigona arcifera (Sheto/Piolo Putkka) is the most popular reared species in Jangchubling and Logchina village. This study recorded the distribution of L. arcifera from 300 m – 1845 m. The people of Jigmecholing gewog rear T. gressiti, L. arcifera and other yet to be determined cryptic Tetragonula species. We recorded the distribution of Tetragonula spp. from 550 m to 980 m.

Our informants observed a huge decline in the number of natural stingless bee colonies over the years. Among the informants, 25% of them collect the natural colonies from the forest and transfer them in modified box hives (Fig. 2B), while 75% of them just exploit the wild colonies through the destructive extraction practice (Fig. 2C). Due to the lack of management practices, the extraction of honey and propolis often results in the loss of the entire colony, posing a threat to the survival of the species in the microhabitat. Local people also practice collecting the natural colonies in wooden logs and keep them in their backyards as it is without modifying them (Fig. 2D). In general, no beekeepers have practiced modern meliponiculture to propagate the colonies other than transferring wild colonies to locally modified wooden bee boxes. This study recorded the price of stingless bee honey ranges from Bhutan Ngultrum (Nu.) 7500 per 750 ml for L. arcifera honey and Nu.12000 for T. gressiti honey.

This study recorded remarkable knowledge of ethno-medicinal uses of stingless bees and their hive products among the several ethnic communities of Bhutan for the first time. The ethnic communities of southern Bhutan are actively engaged in traditional meliponiculture and enriched with knowledge associated with stingless bees. As per one of the consultants, “beekeeping knowledge is transmitted either culturally or orally in Bhutan. However, an increasing number of rural to urban migration among youth and lack of promotion and conservation efforts from the government are concerning to protect and preserve stingless bees in Bhutan.” The traditional uses of stingless bees and their hive products documented here from Bhutan provides unambiguous evidence of the socio-cultural importance of stingless bee to local comminutes, particularly to the Rai, the Bhawan, and the Gurung communities, as indicated by their high values of RCI (Fig. 4). Unlike, some ethnic communities in India [32, 33] and Nepal [8], the ethnic communities of Bhutan have recorded more specific uses of stingless bees which indicates the heavy dependence on natural resources for their everyday life. Our studies support the fact that underprivileged and economically less stable ethnic communities (for example, the Rai community in Bhutan) are more dependent and experts on using and harvesting locally available natural products [34]. In fact, modern meliponiculture could be used as a tool to alleviate the economic marginalization of poor households and to promote local conservation efforts sustainably [35].

Meliponiculture is still in the infant stage in the Indian sub-continent [32] and such activity is rare and not yet documented well from Bhutan [24]. This study demonstrates that the local ethnic communities in Bhutan have extensive knowledge of ecology and the natural history of stingless bees but there is a lack of technical support and sustainable practices as evident in other Asian countries such as China [36], Nepal [8] and India [32]. Ethno-medicinal uses reported by our informants extensively fall within similar categories as reported in other regions of the world [1, 2, 30] where they have already developed a promising meliponiculture industry. The communities in Bhutan have found that the application of stingless bees’ raw honey heals cuts and burns although they are not aware of the mechanism of the healing process. This healing property is attributed to the phenolic compound, antioxidant activities, and antimicrobial properties of the stingless bee honey [38]. Moreover, it is used in treating stomach ulcers and it could be due to the anti-inflammatory properties of this honey [37]. Additionally, livestock is a major component of livelihood for the farmers in Bhutan and stingless honeybees contribute as a treatment for Food and Mouth Disease (FMD) and foot rot disease due to their antimicrobial properties and by preventing drying of the wound as it has moisturizing properties [41]. Stingless bee honey-based hydrogel has shown the potential to be a good wound dressing [39]. Similar to the belief of the ethnic Bhutanese communities on the role of stingless bee products on snake bites, Naga tribes of Nagaland in India also use propolis to treat snake and spider bites (40). Therefore, stingless honeybee products serve as first aid in rural communities. The stingless bee honey has high levels of flavonoids and polyphenols [42] as they are able to visit numerous floral species due to their small body size and the price is high as compared to Apis mellifera honey. In Bhutan due to its rarity and apparently containing higher medicinal values thereby fetching higher prices, over-exploitation of the species is a concern as it has not been domesticated commercially. Therefore, the information generated in this study suggests that the existing local knowledge can provide us with an alternative conservation strategy for the threatened taxon. To develop a sustainable meliponiculture in Bhutan, we need to assess both the productive aspects of the colonies as well as the biological aspects of species. Future research should explore the importance of stingless bees in different indigenous people of Bhutan to align the management practices for the development of sustainable use of stingless bees in the country. Moreover, the therapeutic properties of honey are determined by the geographical origin, botanical source, type of bee, harvesting season, processing method, and weather and storage conditions [38]. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate the physiochemical and therapeutic properties of stingless bee honey since the rich botanical biodiversity and pristine forest of Bhutan could be a unique source of medically and nutritionally dense stingless bee honey.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the Ugyen Wangchuk Institute for Conservation and Environmental Research (UWICER) and the National Biodiversity Center for granting permission to conduct this research. We also thank the staff of Phuentsholing, Jigmecholing, and Jangchubling Forest Range for their immense support during the field visit. We would like to acknowledge the field assistants, Mr. Parkash Gurung and Mr. Tshering Dorji, for their cooperation during the fieldwork and acting as liaisons with local people. Lastly, we would like to thank Idea Wild for supporting this research by granting a camera, which was essential for the fieldwork.

Authors Contribution

The first author TG was responsible for the literature review, research design, field work, systematization, and analysis of field data. TG wrote the first draft and concluded the final version of the manuscript. CPB contributed to research design, field methods, data analysis, and writing the manuscript. The third author TG conceptualized the research and contributed to reviewing literature and drafts. PD contributed to field data collection. JT contributed to data analysis and revision of the manuscript.

Funding

No funding

Availability of data and material

All the data is available in this article.

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

This study is a field survey and does not involve any human or animal-relatedexperimental trials. However, we have obtained verbal consent from all the informants who took part in the study.

Consent for publication

Written informed consent was obtained for the publication of this scientific report and any accompanying images from the National Biodiversity Centre which is the national focal agency for inventory and documentation of traditional knowledge associated with biological resources.

Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Ethno-medicinal uses and cultural importance of stingless bees and their hive products in several ethnic communities of Bhutan

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Abstract

Figures

Background

Methods

Study area

Ethno-zoological information collection

Quantitative evaluation of ethno-zoological data

Results

Common names of stingless bee in Bhutan

Ethno-medicinal uses

Frequency of uses

Relative Cultural Importance

Domestication and sustainable use of stingless bees in Bhutan

Discussion and Conclusion

Declarations

References

Additional Declarations

Status:

Journal Publication

Version 1