Wednesday, 24 Sep 2003

TUSCON, Ariz.

It bee Wednesday, hump day. For once the telephone call wasn’t from an anonymous, fast-talking telemarketer, or someone from my own bank, not realizing I’m already a customer, or Qwest, Sprint, MCI, or one of several other nearly omnipresent telecommunications giants wanting to sign me up. Thankfully, the call that just ended was from my Mexican bee researcher colleague and friend, Dr. Rogel Villanueva. Rogel teaches and conducts research on stingless bee and pollen identification at the College of the Southern Frontier (ECOSUR) in Chetumal. This tropical paradise is on the coast in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, nearly straddling the border with its neighbor, Belize, to the south. We have been planning a trip in November to Rogel’s meliponarios in various Mayan villages, in southernmost Mexico.

Until July of this year, it had been several years since I’d seen Rogel. The first time I met him was during a several-day workshop as part of PCAM (Programma Cooperativa Sobre La Apifauna de Mexico), a program sponsored by the Smithsonian, the University of Kansas, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and funded largely by grants from the National Science Foundation. On that date back in 1984, I was one of a group of U.S. bee guy instructors leading taxonomic identification and ecological workshops for Mexican faculty and students. We had flown in to Cancun and then departed for Puerto Morelos and venues farther south, away from the plague of sun-baked turistas and clever entrepreneurs waiting to sign us up for Cancun timeshare property opportunities.

The PCAM workshop and its bee-collecting expeditions gave rise to another course. This is the Bee Course, which trains U.S. and foreign students in bee classification and identification and bee ecology. I’ve been an instructor for the past five years at the Southwestern Research Station, near Portal, Ariz. SWRS is a field station funded by David Rockefeller (himself a beetle enthusiast) and operated by the American Museum of Natural History.

I still have fond memories of working with that wonderful group of instructors and students. Many have remained steadfast friends. One student in that PCAM course was Dr. Gabriella Chavarria, now a program director for the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, D.C. Gaby is an expert on the taxonomy and biology of Mexican bumblebees and has done a great deal to bring foundation attention and essential funding to pollinator conservation issues. Along with Paul Growald from the Coevolution Institute in San Francisco, she is a cochair of a consortium called the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, whose more than 70 partner organizations are dedicated to animal-pollinator and plant-pollination issues.

Dr. David Roubik of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama is someone I’ve had the pleasure of working with for many years, tramping through various Panamanian, Costa Rican, and Asian rainforests in search of his beloved stingless bees and metallic jewel-like orchid bees. Together, Dave and I have gently squeezed bee bellies to get refractometer readings of the sugar quality of their internal nectar loads for various bee energetic studies. Now — based upon the epic pollen identification monograph created by Rogel — Dave, Rogel, and I are eager to sample honey and pollen samples from within nests. We are interested in discovering which native and introduced plants play the most important roles in the diet breadth of the native stingless bees of Quintana Roo. We also want to find out how the invasive Africanized honey bees may be competing for limited resources with the native bees.

Mayan beekeeper in thatched hut, with traditional hives stacked on A-frame rack.

With funding from the CS Fund of California, my environmental company, The Bee Works, has begun a multi-year study of Mayan beekeepers and two stingless bee species (Melipona beecheii and M. yucatanica) in the forests of southern Mexico, especially in the vicinity of Felipe Carillo Puerto. Our goals are to survey beekeepers and learn the extent of the demise of beekeeping and their sacred Melipona colonies. We are producing bilingual educational guides to help beekeepers make colony transfers from traditional jobones hollow logs to box hives, and to inform them of ways to keep pesky phorid fly parasites from turning their precious bee colonies into seething masses of maggots. We want to find sustainable markets for their Melipona honey (which is delicious) and wax products, as long as we can be assured that profits go back where they belong, into the hands of the Mayan beekeepers.

We are forming a grassroots organization in Quintana Roo made up of Mayan beekeepers, along with Mexican and U.S. businessmen and scientists, to promote and enliven the ancient Mayan beekeeping traditions, conserve their sacred Melipona bees, and protect their ancient forests. We are hopeful that together we can slow or stop the loss of these living bee and plant resources, a sacred heritage of inestimable value to the modern Maya, to Mexico, and the world.

Inside the nest of Melipona beecheii.

My business partner, Jim Donovan, is an expert in GIS systems, and we hope to map the scale, extent, and pace of deforestation in the region. As it turns out, Melipona beecheii is disappearing before our eyes. The largest stingless bees of this forest (M. beecheii and M. yucatanica) nest in hollow portions of the tallest trees, Methuselah giants known as canopy emergents. Today, this tallest forest of the Yucatan Peninsula has largely disappeared. It was felled centuries ago on the Merida side of the peninsula, largely to provide masts and timbers for shipbuilding and to produce Spanish colonial mansions and churches. Fortunately, some remnants of this tall tropical forest (25-30 meters in stature) survive in patches in Quintana Roo. A recently published survey indicates that roughly 25 beekeepers near the small city of Felipe Carillo Puerto once tended more than 800 colonies of Melipona bees. Just two years ago, that number had plummeted to less than 70. We want to know the reasons for this precipitous decline.

The ancient Maya practiced the gentle art of beecraft. They recognized the different types of bees and what kinds of flowers they visited. Honey was used by their shamen, the H-men, in elaborate rituals. If they accidentally killed a bee, they reverently wrapped it in a leaf and buried it. From the Melipona honey, they created a fermented drink known as balche, still relished in the region. Beeswax was used in candles and lostwax casting of metal objects. These fascinating practices were detailed in what must have once been thousands of colorful illustrated bark fiber books created by the Maya. Today, there are only four of these original Mayan books in existence. The rest were discovered and burned by the conquering Spaniards, who viewed them as a threat to the Catholic Church. The famous Madrid Codex is housed in the anthropology museum in Madrid, Spain.

An incense burner depicting the bee god “Ah Mucen Kab” cradling honey pots.

I doubt that Mayans were as fiercely bloodthirsty a lot as they are often portrayed in books, magazines, and television documentaries. You know the Hollywood stereotypes: There are angry temple gods everywhere, just waiting for priests to appease them and guarantee a good harvest by tossing hapless virgin maidens, trussed up with gold chains of course, into the nearest sacred well, or cenote. Rather, I suspect that the ancient Maya of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and El Salvador were more like today’s compassionate Mayan beekeepers and their families, who have shared their honey harvests, stories, beliefs, and smiles with us in their far-flung villages and milpas across the Yucatan peninsula. We’ll be back in November. I can’t wait to see what sweet adventures our next trip will bring.