ere extensively cultured by the Maya for honey, and regarded as sacred. These bees are endangered due to massive deforestation, altered agricultural practices (especially insecticides), and changing beekeeping practices with the arrival of the Africanized honey bee, which produces much greater honey crops.
These bees have been kept by the lowland Maya for thousands of years. The traditional Mayan name for this bee is Xunan kab, literally meaning "royal lady". The bees were once the subject of religious ceremonies and were a symbol of the bee-god Ah-Muzen-Cab, who is known from the Madrid Codex.
The bees were, and still are, treated as pets. Families would have one or many log-hives hanging in and around their house. Although they are stingless, the bees do bite and can leave welts similar to a mosquito bite. The traditional way to gather bees, still favored amongst the locals, is to find a wild hive; then the branch is cut around the hive to create a portable log, enclosing the colony (Figure 37). This log is then capped on both ends with another piece of wood or pottery and sealed with mud. This clever method keeps the melipine bees from mixing their brood, pollen, and honey in the same comb as the European bees. The brood is kept in the middle of the hive, and the honey is stored in vertical "pots" on the outer edges of the hive. A temporary, replaceable cap at the end of the log allows for easy access to the honey while doing minimal damage to the hive. However, inexperienced handlers can still do irreversible damage to a hive, causing the hive to swarm and abscond from the log. On the other hand, with proper maintenance, hives have been recorded as lasting over 80 years, being passed down through generations. In the archaeological record of Mesoamerica, stone discs have been found which are generally considered to be the caps of long-disintegrated logs which once housed the beehives.
Traditional Stingless Bee Hive. Image Courtesy of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Belize37.jpg
Balché, an alcohol beverage similar to mead, was made from fermented honey and the bark of the leguminous Balché tree (Lonchocarpus violaceus), hence its name. It was traditionally brewed in a canoe. The drink was known to have entheogenic properties, that is, to produce mystical experiences, and was consumed in medicinal and ritual practices. The hallucinogenic properties come from tan alkaloid in the bark of the Balché tree, although whether the hallucinogens came from the bark or the honey, which beekeepers would harvest after placing the nests near the trees, remains uncertain. Toxic and hallucinogenic substances can be found in all honey, if bees collect nectar and pollen from certain types of vegetation. Most likely, it is a combination of the two, since balché is made from both the Melipona honey gathered from the Balché flowers, and from the bark of the tree, brewed and fermented together.
Lost-wax casting, a common metalworking method which is typically found where the inhabitants keep bees, was also utilized by the Maya. The wax from Melipona is soft and easy to work, especially in the humid Mayan lowland. This allowed the Maya to create smaller works of art and jewelry that would be difficult to forge. It also makes use of the leftovers from honey extraction. If the hive was damaged beyond repair, the whole of the comb could be used, thus using the entire hive. With experienced keepers, though, only the honey pot could be removed, the honey extracted, and the wax used for casting or other purposes.
The outlook for meliponines in Mesoamerica is grim. The number of active Melipona beekeepers is rapidly declining in favor of the more economical, non-indigenous Africanized Apis mellifera. The high honey yield, 100 kilograms or more annually, along with the ease of hive care and ability to create new hives from existing stock, commonly outweighs the negative consequences of "killer bee" hive maintenance. Furthermore, there are flora that the Africanized honey bees do not visit, such as those in the tomato family, and several forest trees and 