Marvelous Melipona

We all love bees, right? Well, perhaps not those of us allergic to bee stings. Individuals with that problem might do well to spend more time in the region known as the Mayab, since this swath of the American tropics is home to honeybees that do not sting, members of the genus Melipona.

These little pollinators have been cultivated by the Maya for thousands of years, their honey prized for its medicinal as well as culinary properties. Bees were so important in classical Maya culture that deities were associated with them, and if a bee were accidentally killed during honey extraction, it was carefully buried.

Melipona are cavity nesters, and Maya beekeepers kept logs with melipona colonies outside their homes. This bee palapa (or meliponaria) is in the Roger Orellana Botanical Garden in Merida, Yucatan.

Every so often, a shaman blesses the bees and makes (more or less) traditional offerings that include tobacco and tequila.

Unfortunately, these bees, like many of their cousins worldwide, are in trouble, experiencing population declines in their native range. Some of the decline is due to the commercial keeping of Apis mellifera, the European honeybee. Melipona do not store their honey in combs but in wax tubes, making harvesting an exacting process. They also produce much smaller amounts of honey than do European honeybees, which (I am told) are easier to work with

A likely greater contributor to the bees' troubles is habitat loss. The Yucatan peninsula is undergoing rapid development, with the population of Merida predicted to increase by a third over the next decade. This development has led to deforestation, with the scrub forest of much of the region giving way to high rises and modern roads. Concrete does not contain much nectar or pollen. This rapid and too-often-unplanned development is threatening more than bees: a decline in insect populations has led to a decline in bird populations, and loss of pollinators is endangering some plant species that depend on insect pollination.

Gardeners in the Yucatan (like those in the US) also tend toward a preference for showy flowers, but the plants adapted to the thin soils and dry conditions here often have inconspicuous flowers. I was probably in my forties before I realized that palms bloomed

and only in the last few years noticed the insect activity in those bloom clusters. In the Yucatan, something is blooming year-round, but the blooms do not always seem garden-worthy. Fortunately, there is a native-plant movement here as there is in the States, and gardeners can play a role in providing habitat for these important pollinators. Choosing locally-evolved plants for the garden and leaving wood for nesting sites can slow--or reverse?--the decline in Melipona populations.

After all, what's not to like about a creature that aids in flower reproduction, makes fabulous honey, and doesn't sting? And that face!

But a warning: these little gals may not sting, but they will bite if their nests are threatened. Yet another reason to let them be.