About Melipona beecheii Bennett, 1831
Description and identification: Melipona beecheii Bennett, 1831 has a golden-yellowish and brown striped body with translucent wings. Small white hairs cover its head, thorax, and abdomen. Queens, workers, and drones are all roughly the same size. All hive members, regardless of their future role, develop in identical, mass-provisioned, sealed cells. This development arrangement allows for role self-determination, which is the root of caste conflict within this species.
Distribution and habitat: Melipona beecheii is a tropical eusocial bee observed across a range of tropical climate geographic locations. It can be found in Central America, most notably in the southern Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
Reproduction: Like most beehives, an M. beecheii colony has one fertile queen and many nonreproductive female worker bees. The fertile, egg-laying queen of this species is called a physogastric queen. However, M. beecheii produces excess queens, most of which are destined to remain virgins. Workers almost always kill these excess queens before they can start laying eggs.
