**6. Microorganisms in stingless bee honey**

Products of stingless bees are consumed since before the discovery of the Americas to the present day. Honey of these bees has activities against microorganisms, having importance in the colony maintenance as a microbiologically stable environment [96]. Stingless bee honey has characteristics that confer antimicrobial character, i.e., activity against Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria such as *Enterococcus*, *Staphylococcus faecalis*, *Staphylococcus aureus*, *E*. *coli*, *Pseudomonas aeruginosa*, *Bacillus cereus*, and *Candida albicans* [1, 97, 98], which justifies its use in popular medicine [6, 41, 99–101].

However, *Meliponini* also feature mutualistic interaction with microorganisms, i.e., lactic acid bacteria are found in Australian species as *Tetragonula carbonaria*, *T*. *hockingsi*, and *Austroplebeia australis* [102]. Yeasts such as *Starmerella meliponinorum*, *Starmerella neotropicalis*, *Candida apicola*, and *Zygosaccharomyces* spp. are commonly found in the Neotropical species of stingless bees such as *Tetragonisca angustula*, *Frieseomelitta varia*, *Melipona quinquefasciata*, and *Melipona quadrifasciata* [103–105] and provide sensory and conservation to food characteristics [106–109].

About fungi, the interesting fact is that bees cultivate them as food [110] and protection against other pathogenic microorganisms [111], i.e., *Scaptotrigona aff. depilis* young larvae, needs to be fed from the mycelium of *Monascus* genus (*Ascomycotina*) to complete their development [112], which reinforces the intrinsic evolutionary relationship between microorganisms and these bees.

Little is known about pathogens in stingless bees; however, there are no pathogen transfer record from *A*. *mellifera* [113], which shows the lack of information about microorganisms in *Meliponini*.
