Mayan Bees and their Keepers: An abductive analysis of the revival of stingless beekeeping in the Yucatán Peninsula

Melipona beecheii is a domesticated eusocial bee of the stingless Meliponini tribe. Known as Xunan kab, the Royal Lady Bee, M. beecheii has been cultivated by the Yucatec Maya of Mexico for more than 3,000 years. In the early 21st century, scientists recorded a steep decline in traditional beekeeping, with the number of domesticated hives falling as much as 93% over a 25-year period (Villanueva Gutierrez et al, 2005). To try to arrest the extinction of Yucatec meliponiculture, universities, civil society and government agencies collaborated in the design and implementation of new beekeeping training courses. Their efforts appear to have been successful, and scholars recently heralded a ‘resurgence’ in stingless beekeeping (Bratman, 2020). However, there is limited research explaining exactly how and why Xunan kab came back from the brink. The financial return for many stingless beekeepers is negligible, suggesting that utilitarian factors may not be foremost. The reproduction of traditional culture is a possible motive, but meliponiculture in the 21st century has undergone such a transformation that the meaning of tradition is hardly certain. Stingless beekeeping in the Yucatan Peninsula now includes innovative techniques and technologies developed in modern scientific contexts. Younger generations of Maya farmers do not appear to be much interested in old fashioned customs. And Maya women, who were traditionally prohibited from practicing meliponiculture, are now the most ardent defenders of stingless bees. Given the changing face of meliponiculture, this master’s thesis seeks to explain why people start, continue and stop keeping stingless bees. It used a critical realist framework and abductive methodology (Walters and Vayda, 2009) to identify working hypotheses and potential causative factors. To learn more about those factors, 14 beekeepers in the states of Yucatan and Quintana Roo in Mexico were recruited to participate in semi-structured life history interviews. 3 interviews from a previous journalism project in 2018 were added to the data (Kennedy and Arghiris, 2019). The resultant transcripts were translated and analysed thematically using NVivo. The analysis yielded rich data on a wide variety of factors and events. The family, educational networks, traditional culture, conservation ethics, spirituality, emotion, aesthetics and other themes were found to be implicated in beekeeping practices. The results were collated and written up as an ethnographic ‘thick description’. They were then discussed with reference to the literature, answering the research questions and generating new directions for future research.