<p>Stingless bees are important pollinators of cultivated and wild plants, contributing significantly to biodiversity and food security. Conserving pollinator plant interactions is essential to secure these ecosystems services. The use of morphological features in the identification of stingless bees in the genus <i>Hypotrigona</i> is extremely difficult, due to many similarities among species resulting in taxonomic ambiguity. Here, we apply both traditional morphometrics and DNA barcoding as complementary tools for the identification of three <i>Hypotrigona</i> species from Kenya: <i>Hypotrigona gribodoi, H. ruspolii</i> and <i>H. araujoi.</i> Our results show that morphometrics separates <i>H. gribodoi</i> and <i>H. ruspolii</i> from <i>H. araujoi</i>; however there is an overlap between <i>H. gribodoi</i> and <i>H. ruspolii</i>. On the other hand, DNA barcoding separates the three species. There was lower genetic distance between <i>H. araujoi</i> and <i>H. gribodoi</i> from Kakamega (1.4%) than between <i>H. gribodoi</i> collected from Kakamega and <i>H. gribodoi</i> from Mwingi (4.3%). The high genetic distance or intraspecific distance within <i>H. gribodoi</i> strongly suggests cryptic speciation within this species, and that the <i>H. gribodoi</i> collected from Mwingi is a putative new species<i>.</i> Thus the use of morphometrics and molecular taxonomic approaches (DNA barcoding) provide a convenient, robust and reliable way to identify <i>Hypotrigona</i> species. It also indicates the need for a thorough revision of <i>H. gribodoi</i> species.</p
