ECHO Asia Notes AN Issue #45

Stingless Beekeeping (Meliponiculture) on Java

Benjamin S. Fisher, University of the Nations, Youth With a Mission (YWAM), Kona, Hawaii

Stingless Beekeeping, or Meliponiculture, is the keeping of bees from the tribe Meliponini. Stingless bees comprise hundreds of species with there being a possible 89 confirmed species in Subtropical/Tropical Asia and Australia alone (Rasmussen, 2008); and, while many are able to produce honey, they are a completely different Tribe of species from domesticated honey bees (Apis mellifera and Apis cerana indica). While stingless bees do still have stingers, they are small and underdeveloped, rendering them unable to sting a person—which is how they earn their namesake. They are, however, still able to bite (though by some accounts: not painful) and will try and irritate the honey robber by attacking the eyes or ears. Stingless bees have been kept for thousands of years, most notably in the New World Tropics, where there were no honeybees before their introduction by European colonists and explorers. Stingless bees have received much less attention in the form of research and development than honeybees due to a number of factors.

Production of Vegetable Fern (Diplazium esculentum Reytz.) Under Varying Levels of Shade

Patrick Trail, Yuwadee Danmalidoi, Abram Bicksler, and Rick Burnette

Several species of edible ferns exist around the world, ranging from the tropics to more temperate regions, and most commonly include the bracken ferns (Pteridium spp.), ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), and the Stenochlaena spp. ferns. However, the focus of this study is on the vegetable fern (Diplazium esculentum Reytz.), a tropical perennial vegetable crop typically found growing in the Asia and Oceania regions. Sakai et.al. (2016) categorize this edible vegetable fern as a Non-Timber Forest Product or NTFP. It is a regionally significant vegetable crop in India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, and the US state of Hawaii (Lin et al., 2009). The young tender fronds of the fern (commonly referred to as ‘fiddleheads’) are typically eaten fresh, boiled, blanched, or cooked in curries, depending on the region in which they are consumed (Duncan, 2012).