The Melipona Bee: The Sacred Mayan Stingless Bee
The traditional Mayan beekeeping in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
∘ Wait, are there stingless bees?
∘ Stingless bee species of the Yucatan Peninsula
∘ Importance of Melipona bees in the Mayan culture
∘ Drivers of Melipona bees extinction and conservation efforts
Wait, are there stingless bee species?
It is a popular belief that bee species always have a stinger to protect their valuable honey.
This idea is possibly due to the great attention that the media have traditionally had towards the most popular bee species around the world: The European honey bee (Apis mellifera).
It could be hard to imagine a stingless bee species, but in fact, they are one of the oldest and most diverse groups of bees in the world [1].
Stingless bees (or simply meliponines), are corbiculate bees that belong to the tribe Meliponini (order Hymenoptera, family Apidae).
There are more than 550 different stingless bee species belonging to dozens of genera that can be found in most tropical and subtropical regions of the world, including Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia, and tropical America [1].
The stingless bee group contains more species than the bumble bees (tribe Bombini), the honey bees (tribe Apini), and the orchid bees (tribe Euglossini) combined[1].
Meliponines are pollinators of thousands of plant species in tropical and subtropical ecosystems and play a crucial role in human cultures for food production, seed quality, fruit abundance, and human nutrition.
Stingless bee species of the Yucatan Peninsula
In Mexico, beyond the globally known white beaches and hotel strips of the tourist centers in the Yucatan Peninsula (YP), there is the Maya region, which encompasses parts of the Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche, and Quintana Roo.
The YP has a predominantly indigenous Mayan population and is home to 19 native bees [2].
In the YP, there are different native species of stingless bees that are regionally important for honey production, but Melipona beecheii is the most widely used in beekeeping [2, 3].
Several other species of stingless bees such as Melipona yucatanica, Trigona fulviventris, Nannotrigona perilampoides, and Cephalotrigona zexmeniae are also frequently managed [2].
Importance of Melipona bees in the Mayan culture
M. beecheii bees (or simply melipona bees) are semi-domesticated and have been managed by the Maya since pre-Columbian times [4].
They have a high cultural value in Mexico and Central America and play a formidable role in Mayan culture, especially in religion, medicine, and agriculture [2, 5].
By around 300 BC, the Mayans in Yucatan kept M. beecheii in hives, achieving the highest levels of stingless beekeeping practices in the world [6].
Melipona bees and the Mayans had a mutualistic relationship.
The bees that lived near the Mayans received protection from many natural enemies that did not dare to approach the nests (“jobones”) to feed on the honey and the larvae.
The Mayan families that housed the nests, in turn, benefited from the easy access to honey, earwax, and pollen.
Melipona bees are considered gifts from the gods to humanity in the Mayan worldview.
There are twenty-two local Mayan names ascribed to M. beecheii, but the most common name is Xunaan kaab (The “Royal lady ” bee). This name is a reference that the bees were docile and well-born (direct descendants of the Mayan gods) [5, 7].
The Melipona bees were historically reared with extreme care for thousands of years, given their sacred status and the high commercial value of their products [8, 9].
Honey was extracted twice a year in a ceremony that was usually led by a shaman [2]. Bee products were traded from southeastern Mexico to Honduras, where they were used as tribute payments [7].
The honey was an especially coveted product, valued for its ritual importance in the elaboration of beverages used in religious ceremonies (for example, the Balché) [2].
Xunancab bees are represented in the Mayan codices, sculptures, and ancient temples, where the god of the bees, Ah Mucen Cab, is in a descending position on the lintels of these monuments [7].
The Maya traditional healers used honey extensively as a fundamental part of their medicine.
Honey was mainly used to cure dermatological, respiratory, and digestive ailments, as well as to treat eye infections and cataracts, fevers, wounds, burns, poisonous stings or bites, and postpartum conditions [10].
M. beecheii honey has antibacterial properties and offers more antioxidant and inflammation-reduction properties than honey produced from the European honey bee, A. mellifera [10, 11].
Because of its different compositional properties, stingless bee honey is precious and valued much more highly than honey from A. mellifera.
Commercial prices for the Melipona honey range between $25-$40 per kg, compared to $12–15 for the same amount of A. mellifera honey [2].
The price differential is also due to M. beecheii is less productive than the European honey bee.
Melipona bees produce only 1–3 liters of honey (1.4-4.2kg) per year, whereas well-managed A. mellifera hives tend to average around 40 liters (58 kg) of honey [2].
Drivers of Melipona bees extinction and conservation efforts
Despite this importance, the Melipona bee population is declining. Several reasons for this decline include habitat loss, poor nutrition, pesticides and fungicides, parasitic pests, pathogens, and diseases [2].
Native bees have become less popular over time and have suffered from competing against the introduced bee populations.
When the Africanized bee (Apis mellifera scutelatta) was introduced to Mexico around 1986, it outnumbered M. beecheii and displaced it from many of its nesting sites in the wild [12, 13].
In the 1980s, most beekeepers turned to the most productive bee, A. mellifera [7].
The urbanizing trends of the mid-1980s caused a rural exodus and coincided with a cultural current that devalued rural ways of life and this, in turn, made Melipona beekeeping perceived as obsolete [13, 14].
The increase in deforestation, lack of proper management, changes in flowering due to climate change, and low economic interest in meliponiculture further aggravated this situation [12, 13, 14].
A seminal 2005 report [13], indicated that if the declining rates of Melipona beekeeping continued, “by 2008 there will be no domesticated colonies at all” [2].
Fortunately, there has been a growing interest in the revival of stingless beekeeping in the Maya Zone. The rise in Melipona beekeeping has been rapid and widely popularized throughout the YP [2].
Since the introduced bee species do not pollinate as efficiently as native bees, Melipona species are vital to the conservation of forests of the YP [7].
A conjoining of civil society efforts, governmental funding, cooperative-based initiatives, and university support has fostered efforts to bring Melipona bees back from the brink of extinction [2].
