The ancient Maya considered Melipona bees a gift from the gods. Today, these ecologically vital bees face an uncertain future.
In the rural Ithiel Town of Chocholá , Mexico , the woods is filled with the phone of dry leaves rustled by industrious squirrels and the shiny , three - part call of the cinnamon - bellied saltator . We walk through a threshold painted Inachis io blue , with the figure of Ah - Mucen - Kab , the honey god of Maya mythology , cut up on the front . almost two 12 wooden shoebox , each with a minuscule maw on the front , sit in an open shed with a thatched cap . “ amount nearer , ” beckons André Gaillard , the veterinarian atChable Yucatánresort .
Squatting down , I peer at the circular opening , and come eye - to‒unblinking eye with a tiny bee , antenna twitching above its silvery , furry face . “ Like a bouncer at a club , ” according to Gaillard , this miniature sentinel defend a colony of Melipona beecheii , one of 500 types of stingless bees . The louse considers me for a bit before darting at heart to monish about the bearing of an interloper .
For theancient Maya , Melipona bees were revered as a gift by the god . They called them xunan - kab ( “ dame bee ” ) , and used their honey as food for thought and medicine , and in the ceremonial drinkable balché . In the pre - Columbian world of theYucatán , Maya beekeeping , or meliponiculture , was sophisticated , with up to 500 Colony managed in bee houses — like this apiary at Chable Yucatán , but on steroid .
Mayan Melipona Bee
Although the Melipona bee , like all pollinators , is crucial to the health of the local ecosystem , at the end of the last 100 , it was on the brink of defunctness . “ There were not many colonies or beekeepers , ” says José Javier G. Quezada - Euán , a lector in the Department of Tropical Apiculture at the Autonomous University of Yucatán . Thanks to concerted efforts by academics , NGOs , and autochthonous group , the pattern is on the upswing . “ There is a boom in meliponiculture now . The bee and beekeeping traditions are not at risk of exposure of extinction right now , but there are serious threats against both , ” Quezada says .
The sacred bee of the Maya
The Melipona bee is found in tropical area of Mexico , specially the Yucatán Peninsula , as well as in Guatemala , El Salvador , Honduras , Costa Rica , and even Cuba . By 300 BCE , the ancient Maya used hollow out - out log with small entrance holes carved in the centre as hives , close off both ends with disk made of wood or stone . The chemical formula was so successful that when the Spanish colonized Mexico in the 16th hundred , they did n’t introduce the European Apis mellifera , Apis mellifera , to the Yucatán , as they did in other parts of the nation .
The bee was integral to Mayan life . About 20 % of theMadrid Codex , one of three aver books of Mayan cosmology — a copy of which is on eyeshot at theGrand Maya World MuseuminMérida — is dedicated to its spiritual significance and management proficiency .
Habitat destruction began first as the colonizers shed light on timberland to make grazing fields for Bos taurus , and accelerated a couple centuries after , when haciendas were developed for grow sisal and henequen , plants related to the blue century plant of tequila - making renown and used for manufacturing roach . As unspoiled soil ( and large trees ) postulate for beekeeping dwindled , and thousands of Maya were kill or fire , centuries ’ worth of traditional noesis was pushed to the margin of rural towns .
Photo courtesy of Chable Yucatan
While sake in pollinators has help oneself the number of Melipona bees rebound , continued deforestation , climate variety , and the far-flung use of pesticides have presented new terror . Quezada points out that taking on a backyard colony is n’t necessarily the solution . “ In many situation , people are not properly educate . They do n’t have a go at it the biology of the bee or appropriate management . Stingless bee are very sensitive to caloric change , so if they ’re translocated to a stead that has more extreme heat or moth-eaten , the colonies suffer . Many are dying out . ”
Nectar of the gods in medicine and food
Back in the timberland at Chable Yucatán , Gaillard carefully slew open up the hat of a beehive box . A quiet buzzing emanates from the interior , where thousands of tiny bees bustle around a pockmarked lunar landscape in miniature . “ Every box is like a urban center , ” says Gaillard , pointing out the bubbles where bee salt away honey , and the hexagonal “ castle ” made of beeswax that serve as the queen ’s house and nursery , where she lay 100 of bollock that will develop into the next generation . He nudges a hum bee up onto my indicant fingerbreadth , and my tegument vibrates .
Using a plastic unwritten syringe , Gaillard extracts a small amount of honey from one of the diminutive hills and press a dollop onto the back of my hand . I lick it off , savour a modest sweetness and pronounced flowered taste , the honey fresher , fluid , and more intensely flavored than the stuff in the teddy bear - shaped supermarket nursing bottle .
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For 100 , autochthonic people in Mexico have used Melipona honey to deal sore pharynx and asthma , prostate gland enlargement , digestive swage and complaint , eye disease such as cataract , and problems of the ears and hide . I suppose of this subsequently in the day , when I abstractedly scratch my hand and find a delicate spot where the honey had been . Recentstudieshave even suggested that stingless bee honey has antibiotic property .
Maya keepers still dominate the field , with agroup of Mayan womenacting as the expectant producers of Melipona honey in the Earth . While Quezada has observed that previous beekeepers still prefer to use the traditional hollow out - out logarithm for bee management , younger meliponiculturalists have largely taken to the hive - box method acting , which is promiscuous and better maintains the unity of the colony and its dearest .
Quezada also points to a growing group of urban beekeepers in and around the Yucatecan capital . replication to the hypothesis that the Melipona bee does n’t survive in urban environments , Quezada says , “ We ’ve hear many beekeepers here in Mérida , and the bees seem to be thriving . It ’s potential some of the plant life and flower in the city are helping . ”
Chable Yucatán
Modern Meliponiculture
Today , bee preservation efforts are result by mixed generations of investigator , ecologists , and pedagog . Nonprofits such asEducampo MXprovide preparation to empower new beekeepers in rural areas , particularly women , whileU Yits Ka’an Organic Agriculture School , in the southeasterly Yucatán , hosts workshop for farmers .
Last August , the Mexican Department of Agriculture and Rural Development curb its secondForum on Honeybees and Beekeeping , with a number of experts on hand to discuss direction practices , sustainability , and improvement of the transmitted pool . There ’s even an American - Mexican collaborative project that will place40 hive boxes in the Rhizophora mangle swampsof the Yucatecan coastal towns of Dzilam de Bravo and Progreso .
Sister Andrea and Emmaida Figueroa , along with beekeeper Rodrigo Navarro , plant the five - year - old Mérida - free-base advocacy initiativeMiel Nativa . For them , increase awareness is key . “ There ’s very lilliputian public knowledge about stingless bees , even within Mexico , ” says Andrea . “ When we first learned about them , we enquire how we did n’t do it before about the bee , the medicative properties of the honey , or their relationship to the Maya — or how these family relationship were being lost . ”
Photo courtesy of Chable Yucatan
Production is its own sticky situation . According to Emmaida , Melipona honey can motley wide in quantity , flavor , and color depending on when the flowers the bees feed from begin to bloom , and how hospitable the mood is that year . An median - size Melipona beehive produces about one liter of love yearly — compare to 70 liters from a colony of honeybee .
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little production , Emmaida says , has meant “ a lot of unwanted thing started happening , like super depleted cost offered to beekeepers , or disforestation from people locomote into the woodland to extract the crazy bee themselves . ”
Through educational exchange among beekeepers andmultisensory direct experienceswithin rural working meliponarios , Miel Nativa encourage both the product and Indigenous cognition conservation . The organisation ’s shop stocks Melipona and other type of honey , as well as bee products like Georgia home boy and candle . And they offer in - deepness dearest tastings for traveler and culinary professionals alike .
At Chable Yucatán , a visit to the six - year - onetime educational meliponario is part of the property ’s Green Route guided experience . Guests can also reserve a love sample or a bee shop , and see to transmute the dear and beeswax into operative products . Or they can participate in a beekeeping session at the meliponario , follow by a cinch . Chable Yucatán latterly summate a second meliponario , which will produce honey for the resort ’s restaurant menus and local - product dress shop .
A new approach
The conservation status of the Melipona bee may be temporarily more inviolable , but accord to experts , it wo n’t remain that manner for recollective if humans do n’t reconsider our relationship with travel , the environs , and food . On the tourism front , Quezada cautions visitors to be more aware not just of the comforter and amenities of Mexican resort , but of their sustainability programs and impact on local ecosystems .
The Figueroa baby apprize a new approach to consuming food . “ We need to understand what has to come about for us to get a jounce of honey on our table , ” Andrea says . “ What did the producer have to do ? Who has been involved , and where are they located ? Who is benefiting , and who is not ? We can start with honey , but really take that approach to everything we consume , whether that ’s a loving cup of deep brown or an avocado . ”
Gaillard ’s assessment is blunter . “ If the bee vanish , intact ecosystems could go away , ” he say . “ We can not live alone . If we want to preserve our own existence in the world , we need to protect the aboriginal animal . ”
Miel Nativa Kaban
Chable Yucatán
