Learn about Beekeeping

For the Mayan people, honey from Melipona bees is medicinal, nourishing, and sweet. In Maní, the ancestral custom of beekeeping continues, especially for medicinal uses. The municipality has around 30 Melipona beekeepers who extract honey with healing powers that is also prized as a dietary supplement. These honeybees are vitally important to the community, and so ritual ceremonies such as U Jaanli kab (the food of the bees) and U jeets luumil kab (the ideal conditions for honey production) are carried out, with the goal of bringing good weather and plentiful blooms across the countryside, as well as for the next season’s honey harvest.

If you would like to know more about beekeeping and get to know the women who do it, Maní is the perfect place to take part in this environmental tourism activity.