Abstract
The objectives of this research are to study the result of stingless bee culture within a mangrove forest, a salt-marsh and a mixed-culture plantation of Surat Thani province and to find out on natural species diversities of the stingless bee and flower plants within the 3 environments. For the duration of 12 months (February 2015-January 2016) data of the hives’ weight before and after culturing with reweighing each hives every two weeks during the experiment. The data were then analyzed for monthly change in hive weight and the difference among the three environments was compared and tested with Duncan Multiple Range Test. In each environment, a circular area with 200 – 300 meter radius around a stingless bee nursery house was designated as the study areas in which survey of natural species of stingless bee and flower plants were surveyed. After culturing period of twelve months, all cultured hives of T. fascobalteata had their weight gain of 373.33, 343.33 and 235.00 gm for mangrove forest, salt-marsh and mixed-culture plantation respectively with no statistically significant difference of the hive weight among the three environments at 0.5 confident level. Four families and six species of the stingless bee were found which were Genotrigona thoracica, Tetragonilla collina, Tetragonula fascobalteata, Tetragonula dresheri, T. pegdeni and Tetrigona apicalis .The number of flowering plants found were 31 genus and 50 species in the mangrove forest, 18 genus and 26 species in the salt marsh and 33 genus and 59 species in the mixed-culture plantation, respectively.
culturing-stingless-bee-in-suratthani-province