The Royal Lady Bee
For some 3,000 years the Maya have kept a gentle, golden stingless bee, Melipona beecheii. In Yucatec Maya she is Xunan Kab, the Royal Lady Bee.
A sacred trust
Colonies were kept in hollow logs, sealed at each end and stacked in rows. The honey was food, medicine and offering; the wax went into ritual. The Madrid Codex, one of only a handful of Maya books to survive, gives many of its pages to beekeeping and to the bee god, known in Yucatec as Ah Muzen Cab.
Archaeologists working in Quintana Roo, Mexico, have found the stone lids that once closed hive logs, and a pre-Hispanic bee house that held rows of them.
Each Maya language has its own names for these bees. Komonil’s beetenders, who are Q’eqchi’ and Mopan, are the authority on what they are called in Toledo.
A tradition disappearing
Across the Yucatán Peninsula, researchers have warned that traditional Melipona keeping is close to vanishing. Introduced honeybees produce far more honey and have displaced it; forest has been cleared; and the knowledge has passed to too few people in the generation now keeping bees.
The conservation literature describes Melipona beecheii as endangered, with local extinctions documented in the Yucatán. In Belize no bee has yet been formally assessed at all. More on that gap.
The work ahead
Komonil’s beetenders keep smaller native stingless bees today. They are learning to keep native bees in boxes and to harvest without destroying the nest.
Komonil is now working to source Royal Lady Bee colonies. None are yet in Komonil hives. Bringing the bee back to Toledo’s villages, in the hands of Maya women, is the next stage of the work.
Sources: Smithsonian Magazine on Maya beekeeping and the hive lids found in Quintana Roo; NPR on the Madrid Codex; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute on the decline of stingless beekeeping in the Yucatán.