For the Maya, the honey bee is more than an insect. For millennia, the tiny, stingless species Melipona beecheii—much smaller than Apis mellifera, the European honey bee—has been revered in the Maya homeland in what is now Central America. Honey made by the animal the Maya call Xunan kab has long been used in a sacred drink, and as medicine to treat a whole host of ailments, from fevers to animal bites. The god of bees appears in relief on the walls of the imposing seacliff fortress of Tulum, the…
