Thousands of year before Europeans work their honey - make bees to the continents they would finally call the Americas , a gentle , stingless honeybee was regard sacred among the Mayans .
The Mayans tended to the bee with love and forgivingness . They cautiously propagate and ferociously protected the bees . They raise stone moats around an apiary to keep out ants , and hung sacred plant around the apiary structure to repel malign spirits .
CalledMelipona beecheii , or Xunan kab , this name literally translate to “ purple madam . ” These stingless honeybees do n’t hurt humans . Historically shaver tended them and kept them as pet .
Melipona gather nectar and pollen like their European cousins , and their honey flavor , texture and color is regulate by theterroirof their environment . The flowers they visit and the particular weather of a give season . But they disagree in many ways , too .
Melipona beehive are quite small , created in the hole of trees . And rather of building vertical rows of combing , the bees shape architectural wax social system into little “ pots ” where they pull in their dearest .
Melipona also educate multiple queens , eventually choosing one per settlement cycle . They still gather and stack away pollen , just as European bees do . But these gentle stingless bees are quite picky about which flowers they gossip . This practice suffice the pollenation of their aboriginal tropic very well .
When they do receive nectar they like , they plow it into a honey we might not accredit . It ’s often very watery compared with the beloved ofapis mellifera . Its pale semblance might even fool you .
Much of the honey produced by melipona is very pale to clear . And it ’s much more acidulous than other honeys .
Sacred Honey
The ancient Mayans who cared for melipona ( as some of their posterity still do ) offered shelter and safety for the bee in telephone exchange for the gift of dear . They guarded carefully Melipona bee , protected them against predators and revered them in religious ceremonial .
It was — and still is — a symbiotic family relationship build in great trustfulness and regard . The honey was so consecrated , it was used meagrely andoffered as medicine . It was given to raw mothers because it was the most nutritious and hallowed oblation to be given .
Melipona bee do n’t produce much dearest compare with the amount produced by European bees . This makes the marrow all the more precious . A individual melipona beehive might produce about 2.5 pounds per year , equate with more than 60 pounds of nimiety honey ( the amount that humans can reap above and beyond the amount the bee need to outlive the winter ) produced by a thriving European beehive .
But thenative bees of Central America are disappearing , just as the European honeybee is . And many aboriginal bee all around the world are struggling .
So many insects and animals are going nonextant because of factor including deforestation , personnel casualty of habitat and invasive species , it seems that we rarely take heed about them any more . The small glimmer of promise is that several Brazilian and Mexican universities are research means to implement the melipona ’s alone skillset to a commercial farming context .
It ’s less than ideal , equate with generations of sacred beekeepers working to like for their flush . But there might be some Bob Hope that the stingless honeybee can survive in our change world .
