- [I] useful for [[Tyoka]] stories. - broader:: [[animals]] - related:: [[2021-01-04 Wax (DRAFT)]] > [!quote] [What is the history of bee keeping in mesoamerica?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tz3fbn/what_is_the_history_of_bee_keeping_in_mesoamerica/) via [[rAskHistorians|AskHistorians]] on 2022-04-06 by [[wotan_weevil]] (quality contributor) > it probably developed in the Yucatan peninsula, which was the centre of beekeeping for the last 2,000 years in Mesoamerica (even today, it's the main honey-producing region of Mexico). Noting that the European honeybee is a post-Columbian introduction to the Americas, American beekeeping began with native bees, which are still kept today. > > A different range of species are kept in South America (mostly in Brazil). The tribe _Meliponini_ has over 500 species, and is spread over the tropics worldwide, with species in Africa, South Asia, SE Asia, and Australia; not all of these species produce enough honey to be attractive to keep (other than as pets, which some people do). > > Until recently, bee colonies were usually captured from the wild - these bees are tamed rather than domesticated. This is one reason why the early history of Mesoamerican beekeeping is obscure - since the bees aren't domesticated, we can't determine how long ago they were domesticated. The bees from kept hives are identical to wild bees, and so are their products. Thus, the presence of honey in the diet (e.g., as shown to have been the case in the Tehuacan valley about 2000 years ago, from analysis of coprolites) or the use of beeswax aren't evidence of beekeeping, since these can be collected from the wild (however, large quantities of honey and/or wax are a good sign of beekeeping). This is also why a variety of species is kept, including in the the same region - what lives in the wild is what you keep in your hives. > > The other reason why the early history is obscure is that the main type of hive such bees were (and still are) kept in are hollow logs about 2-3 feet long: [http://www.scielo.org.mx/img/revistas/ecm/v44/a4f10.jpg](http://www.scielo.org.mx/img/revistas/ecm/v44/a4f10.jpg) > > Wood doesn't survive well in tropical conditions. Notably, the oldest Mayan hive found so far, about 2000 years old, is ceramic, of cylindrical shape, imitating the shape of the more common log hives: http://www.scielo.org.mx/img/revistas/ecm/v44/a4f9.jpg > The main products of beekeeping were honey, wax, and resin. All of these were used as trade/tribute/tax items. Melipona honey typically has a higher water content than _Apis_ honey, and has a relatively poor shelf life. Early Spanish historical sources note that the honey was boiled to reduce the water content to improve the shelf life, and make it a more useful trade product. This process is still used today. Honey was used as a sweetener, and as a medicine. It also appears to have been an important ritual item, with honey/bee gods worshipped (indicating the social and economic important of beekeeping) and bee products were involved in this worship. Apart from Spanish language sources, honey trade/tribute and beekeeping gods appear in Mayan and Aztec codices, showing that beekeeping was important in these ways by AD1200, and continued to be important into the colonial era. > > In pre-Columbian times, a major use of wax was for lost-wax casting. Notably, highland Peru, outside the range of beekeeping, made much less use of casting than Mesoamerica. During the colonial era, wax continued to be an important trade and tax item, partly due to the Catholic Church's burning hunger for beeswax candles. In one tax collection, in 1549, about 150 villages paid about 3 tons of honey and almost 300 tons of wax as taxes. > > The resin, made by the bees in their hive-building, was used as a glue.