 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 