“Wrong” vulture bees that feed on carrion and make “correct honey”

In a wonderful Soviet cartoon, Winnie the Pooh bear notices that the bees he climbed into the hollow of are “wrong” and make “wrong honey.” It’s hard to imagine that bees that can be called that actually live in North and Central America and they feed not on pollen, but… carrion.

Scientists call Vulture bees three species of bees from the Trigona family that feed on decaying flesh. These are small flying insects that are difficult to distinguish from ordinary bees, except by their behavior. Vulture bees do not have a sting, so they are practically defenseless against the hostile world around them. But they can find food for themselves even in the desert, because they don’t really need flowers.

The vulture bee was discovered and first described 200 years ago. Despite this, all the nuances of the life of this amazing winged insect became known only in 1982. These bees, guided by smell, find a corpse that has begun to decompose and circle over it, looking for a more tender place.

The vulture bee cannot bite off pieces of flesh due to its weak jaws, so it secretes saliva onto the meat, which dissolves it, and then eats the resulting mass. Insects prefer to penetrate inside the carcass, where the flesh is softer, so they primarily attack the eye sockets and wound sites.

For a long time, scientists thought that Vulture bees made honey from decomposed meat, which they filled their honeycombs with and fed to their larvae. It would be most logical to assume that this is exactly what is happening, but in the 80s of the last century, entomologists were faced with an unexpected discovery. Scientists saw vulture bees collecting nectar on flowers like ordinary bees.

There was a smell of discovery in the air, and insects became the subjects of serious study for the first time since their discovery. It unexpectedly turned out that although these bees feed on rotting meat, they do not produce honey from it. To feed their offspring, vulture bees collect nectar and make the most common honey from it. At the same time, as expected, scavengers pollinate flowers no worse than ordinary bees.

Unfortunately, there is no information about what honey from “wrong” bees tastes like. Experts say that it looks the same as any other and consists of the same substances. What about trying... Would you eat honey from a bee that eats carrion, even knowing that it collects nectar from flowers in between?