Beeworks Brazil: Beehives for Forest Families

Greetings all,

I hope your new year is going well so far.  Beeworks Brazil has been busy over the past few months.  In early November, I joined Dr. Roberto Greco's class in visiting Guapiruvu to observe how the extension project is developing.  The students from UNICAMP got in-depth field experience on how to build collaborations with local communities and learned about native bees and how the Beeworks project worked.  Gabriela, our bee specialist from São Paulo, was on site to demonstrate both to the students and the community members how to divide beehives.  The division of beehives is important to help grow the number of bees visiting local flora as well as to provide new income to the community through the sale of beehives, honey, and propolis.

Additionally, during this trip, we donated three Bugia bee hives to the indigenous community of Tekoa Nhanderu Porã.  It is a young community that recently acquired land near the Carlos Botelho State Park in Vale do Ribeira and they are working to develop ecotourism experiences for visitors.  This is part of the next phase of Beeworks Brazil, which is to expand our work to indigenous communities in the region.

In January, Roberto returned to Guapiruvu to assist in a weeklong activity with the children and teens of the community.  During this week, Gabriela and Roberto showed a variety of native bees at the Guapiruvu meliponario to the kids and afterwards, the kids created art projects and flags for their favorite bee species (it was important for them to draw the bees without stingers, because they're stingless!).  Activities continued at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo with activities about snakes (both venomous and non-venomous) as part of years-long projects to help kids get to know their rain forest environment better.  Unfortunately, severe weather later in the week closed the Carlos Botelho State Park, where additional activities had been scheduled, but that is the nature of the rain forest.

Little by Little is coming up the week of March 17th.  During this campaign, donations up to $50 will be matched at 50%.  I hope you'll consider contributing to Beeworks to help us grow our community of bee enthusiasts in 2027!

With gratitude,
Lev

Greetings all,

I'm happy to report that Beeworks Brazil is in full swing.  As it is now spring in Brazil, it is the perfect time to launch the major work of the project.  In August, Dr. Roberto Greco along with Gabriela, a bee specialist from São Paulo, traveled to Guapiruvu with 10 hives of Melipona monduri (bugia) bees, which they helped distribute and set up with four families.  Gabriela provided the first beekeeping lessons to the families, which have continued since then via WhatsApp.

In September, 10 additional hives of mandaçaia stingless bees were brought to Guapiruvu by community leader Gilberto and were installed as well.  Currently, Roberto and 21 students from Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) in his teacher training course are visiting Guapiruvu and the surrounding location to better understand how extension projects are developed and deployed and how to build long-term collaborations with communities for such projects.  We'll be conducting a similar visit in a few weeks with an additional 25 students and with Gabriela, who will be showing the community members how to transplant captured wild bee populations into managed hive boxes, and how to reproduce the colonies for more hives.

Giving Tuesday is coming up December 2nd, right after Thanksgiving.  We're far behind on our fundraising goal for Beeworks to fund our partners for 2026.  I hope you'll consider a generous donation to Beeworks to help meet our goal as you consider your end-of-year giving.  Our partners and the Guapiruvu community are counting on you!

With gratitude,

Lev