Vulture bees are a small group of three closely related American

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 stingless bee

Stingless bee

Stingless bees, sometimes called stingless honey bees or simply meliponines, are a large group of bees, comprising the tribe Meliponini . They belong in the family Apidae, and are closely related to common honey bees, carpenter bees, orchid bees and bumblebees...

 species in the genus Trigona

Trigona (genus)

Trigona is the largest genus of stingless bees, formerly including many more subgenera than the present assemblage; many of these former subgenera have been elevated to generic status. There are approximately 150 species presently included in the genus, in 11 subgenera...

which feed on rotting meat

Carrion

Carrion refers to the carcass of a dead animal. Carrion is an important food source for large carnivores and omnivores in most ecosystems. Examples of carrion-eaters include vultures, hawks, eagles, hyenas, Virginia Opossum, Tasmanian Devils, coyotes, Komodo dragons, and burying beetles...

 rather than pollen

Pollen

Pollen is a fine to coarse powder containing the microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce the male gametes . Pollen grains have a hard coat that protects the sperm cells during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants or from the male cone to the...

 or nectar. These are the only known bees which do not rely on plant products for food. This unusual behavior was only discovered in 1982, nearly two centuries after the bees were first classified.
The three species in this group are:

Trigona crassipes (Fabricius, 1793)

Trigona hypogea hypogea Silvestri, 1902 and Trigona hypogea robustior Schwarz, 1948 (two subspecies within T. hypogea)

Trigona necrophaga Camargo & Roubik, 1991

Sources

• http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1590/is_1_61/ai_n9510935

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