Costa Rica has different regions with different conditions. Where I am located, in Limon, we don’t really have the extended dry season that the Central Valley and Pacific coast experience. Our melipona seem to be active all the time and I’ve never heard, when speaking with local experts, that there is a season when bees simply wont colonize a new box.
We have been successful in attracting melipona while others manage a division of the hives, extracting the queen and putting it in the new hive. Apparently the hive that lost the queen can produce another.
There are many people in this area interested in melipona management. Where I have seen a resurgence of interest is in Yucatán. There they have some very large programs.
Peter