In the remote forests of central Perú, stingless bees are doing far more than making honey. They're anchoring an entire way of life.
Their presence shapes crop yields, cultural traditions, and the long-term health of one of the world's most threatened ecosystems. For many Indigenous communities, protecting these bees isn't a niche environmental effort but a safeguard for their own future.
"Without them we would not live. They pollinate the plants we eat," Asháninka beekeeper Micaela Huaman Fernandez told Inside Climate News.
Chemical biologist Rosa Vasquez Espinoza has become one of their most committed partners. Through Amazon Research Internacional, she works with families who have relied on meliponine bees for generations, connecting ancestral practices with modern research to prove what locals have long understood: These insects are essential workers in the forest's survival.
Outside of the forests, "they've been invisible," Espinoza said, describing how decades of policy and science overlooked the species even as heat, deforestation, pesticide drift, and invasive honeybees hollowed out their populations.
Espinoza's path back to the Amazon was shaped by her own upbringing in Quechua communities and her desire to ground scientific research in lived experience rather than extract it from afar. That approach has reshaped how conservation takes place in the Avireri-Vraem Biosphere Reserve, where communities now co-manage a first-of-its-kind legal framework recognizing stingless bees as rights-bearing beings.
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Written by local leaders, the Satipo (Perú) Declaration: Rights of Native Stingless Bees gives residents a formal tool to challenge habitat loss, restrict destructive pesticide use, and block unauthorized beekeeping that harms native colonies, placing decision-making power directly in the hands of the people most dependent on the forest.
"It is the first time that any legal entity in the world recognizes the rights of an insect," said Espinoza, who has spent the last few years pushing for legal protections for stingless bees.
The day-to-day work on the ground blends ecology with economic stability. Families are trained in meliponiculture methods that expand colonies without disturbing wild nests. They map foraging routes to create bee corridors, replant native flowering species across damaged landscapes, and restore areas hit by wildfires. Their honey — valued for its antiviral and antibacterial properties — creates a stable income stream that supports families and reduces pressure to engage in environmentally risky work. "This is not just any honey," explained César Delgado, a Peruvian entomologist.
If Espinoza's work proves anything, it's that conservation gains momentum when local knowledge leads the way. Through her efforts, several communities have made stingless bees visible in the eyes of law, science, and markets, shifting agency to the people who live beside them.
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The new declaration makes that relationship explicit. "The rights of stingless bees of the Peruvian Amazon are intrinsic and inseparably connected with the human rights and welfare of present and future generations," it states.
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