BEEKEEPING
&
DEVELOPMENT
ROYAL Ly f "
HAYAN Chad Poovey
AFRICANIZED HONEY BEES Honduras in 1985. Since then they have outarrived in
manoeuvred their transplanted and tropically-frail european cousins. Apiculture in Honduras has become a battle; men don their armour; their gloves, their veils, their suits; they pillage under cover of smoke; the bees sacrificed to a suicidal degree.
STINGLESS BEES
The Maya symbol for the honey bee entering a hive. (Illustration by Alberto Beltran from
VictorW
Hagen’s World of the Maya
Hollow tree trigitks serve as frees far
Melipona beecheli
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Here and there in the countryside a more harmonious relationship still exists between man and melliferous insect: harmonious because the native bees of Central America are stingless. One of these is the Royal Hayan bee These stingless bees are Melipona beecheii, known by common names according to region: la abeja de la miel virgen (the bee of the virgin honey), el blanco del pais (the white countryman), and el jicote (the indigenous name) Most frequently it is called la blanca estrella (the white star) or simply la estrella (the star). It is slightly smaller than the Africanized honey bee, with a darker abdomen and a fuzzier thorax. Melipona beecheii colonies establish themselves in protected enclosures, usually hollow logs. Man has not changed this system, the logs are cut toa manageable size, then carried with the colony still inside to the "bee haver's” house. The open ends of the trunk are plugged, usually with a wooden block or a piece of pottery, then sealed with mud. They are then hung from nearby trees or the eaves of buildings Often houses are completely encircled by these strange, mud-daubed trunks, some long and regular shaped, others bulging like beer barrels, others mis-shapen like crudely-hacked congo drums
WAFER-SHAPED NURSERIES the hives themselves intrigue, what goes on inside amazes. Melipona beecheii constructs comb of dark, sticky wax for the sole purpose of raising brood. No honey or pollen is stored in the cells of these wafer-shaped nurseries, which are stacked one on top of the other. Unlike other social insects, this bee does not feed its larva several times a day until the cell If
is capped. Instead it fills the cell with sufficient pollen and nectar for the larva’s development, then seals the cell. As the larva develops into a pupa, a papery cocoon is formed inside the wax cell. On the day of emergence, worker bees cut away the wax capping to help the young
bee out.
Honey and pollen are stored in wax pots on each side of the brood nest. The pots, which Hondurans call mazorcas (corn cobs), are attached to the wall of the hive and are sealed when full. As stores increase more pots are built until only a narrow crawl-way remains free for worker bee traffic.
The hive entrance is also small, just wide enough to admit one bee at a time. The entrance is constantly guarded; the fuzzy head of a sentry can always be seen protruding from the tiny porthole. Wax is spread around the entrance in a star-shape, hence this bee’s most common nickname, la estrella.
BEE HAVERS Such a tight hive is essential to the bee's survival where so many predators, such as ants, cockroaches, mites, toads, and wasps abound. The bee's only defence ts its mild bite - a pinch of the minuscule jaws, that when inflicted on the back of a weathered hand barely registers as pain. Strategy compensates for lack of firepower; the resourceful estrella somehow knows to attack the tender lips, nostrils, eyelids and earlobes of its aggressor. The degree of defensiveness varies from one colony to the next; some are peaceful to the point of indifference, others loathsome in their
CHAD POOVEY
Weatherproof Apiary
wooden plug fram one end of the hive
own quiet way. “Some have given me a bit of trouble’, says Mariano Bonilla, of El Porvenir, Comayagua, Honduras who owns 15 estrella hives. “But still, prefer these stingless bees to the
DRAWINGS
A
To begin honey harvesting, Mariano Bonilla rentoves the
African honey bees. These bees can be robbed gently and only to a degree, but very rarely tampered with. Hence we call ourselves “bee havers” and not “beekeepers”.
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