Importância ecológica das abelhas sem ferrão: percepção dos alunos do ensino médio de escolas da rede pública de ensino, Capitão Poço, Pará.

Abstract

Stingless bees (Meliponini) are part of an important group of insects with extensive diversity in Brazil and worldwide . In addition to honey production, this group of insects are essential for the maintenance of ecosystems, as they are responsible for pollinating 30% to 90% of native plant species. However, there is an enormous scarcity of information on the biology of these insects and their importance, which leads to a decline in the size of the populations and the disappearance of some species, not only in Brazil, which threats food security. In this context, the dissemination of knowledge about stingless bees to popularize information is a strategy that can provide their conservation. This can be achieved through studies of Environmental Perception, which generate diagnoses on the knowledge of a certain group and can support measures based on environmental educationthat will contribute to the conservation of these natural resources. Thus, the objective of this study was to verify the perception of high school students from two public schools in the city of Capitão Poço, Pará, regarding stingless bees and to examine their knowledge about the ecological importance of these organisms. The research was carried out in the municipality of Capitão Poço, Northeast of Pará, in two public schools: E.E.E.F.M. Belina Campos Coutinho and E.E.E.F.M. Professora Terezinha Bezerra Siqueira. For data collection, a semi-structured questionnaire was used, made with the help of the Google Forms tool. Subsequently, the data were tabulated in Microsoft Excel® 365 software spreadsheets and compared using graphs and tables. We verified the lack of knowledge of high school students about the importance of native bees for the most diverse ecosystem services, linking these insects mostly to the production of honey. Further, there was a large number of responses that refer to fear or something bad, particularly related to stings, which demonstrates that there is still a general popular thought that all bees have a stinger is still very present. The study becomes a crucial step to verify how the knowledge base is on the subject and provides the dissemination of knowledge about native bees as a means of raising awareness of the environmental problems that are getting worse every day by the lack of recognition of the importance of stingless bees for the maintenance of different ecosystems. Finally, the results allow for subsidizing future works on ecological design and importance of stingless bees based on Environmental Education, both in schools and within community in general.