The Bees in the Trees

The Eléctrico palenque (distillery) welcomes visitors willing to travel over the hills from the great central valley of Oaxaca. However, receiving hundreds at once is unusual, especially when they are bearing such sweet, rare, and valuable gifts. Indeed, these guests were so welcome that Cirino and his family invited them to stay on for as long as they wished.

Firewood is essential in the making of Eléctrico Mezcal. All Artesanal Mezcal is made that way, though some are less picky than others about where they source their supply.

The laws in the San Baltazar Valley are very strict. Timber may only be foraged from dead trees or bought from licensed sustainable sources, and we at Eléctrico fully support this rule. It is why the valley remains lush, unlike some parts of Oaxaca that denuded their land of trees.

Eléctrico’s Maestro Mezcalero Cirino is both fussy and conscientious about the firewood he uses. It must be dead oak, foraged from the hills around the palenque wherever possible. But sometimes, he must top up his supply by buying it.

One recent delivery came with a bonus. Some of the logs were humming! He called Isabel over to listen. She looked confused. Carefully splitting one of the logs open, Cirino exposed a rare and wonderful sight: a meliponid bee colony and a fragrant cache of rich, dark honey. Meliponid bees don’t have stings and are one of the hundreds of different species of stingless bees that nest in dead tree trunks across Mexico and tropical America.

For over 1000 years, the Maya people revered and managed stingless bees, using the honey’s unique antibacterial properties to heal wounds and treat diabetes, cataracts, and other ailments. The honey, stored in tiny beeswax pots inside the trunks, was believed to be concentrated sunlight. The Mayans learned how to build hives from hollow logs or ceramic pots and managed the swarms. They traded it with the Aztecs and the Spanish, but within their community, no one was allowed to profit from this gift of the Gods.

Cirino encouraged Isabel to try the dark, rich, and incredibly delicious honey. The bees buzzed around her, annoyed but not stinging. Cirino harvested some of the honey and then resealed the trunk. ‘The bees will finish the job,’ he said. ‘They use their own wax to keep out predators.’

Sadly, less caring people are the greatest threat to Mexico’s stingless bees. The Spanish didn’t help, bringing their swarms of European honeybees (Apis), which created huge aggressive colonies and produced many times more honey. They attacked the unarmed and relatively passive meliponid bees and drove them away. The scarcity value of the intense meliponid honey attracted predatory honey hunters who destroyed colonies for a quick buck. A typical hive might only produce two or three pounds of honey a year, but just one pound of meliponid honey sells in the USA for $100.

Today, although over 300 different species of stingless bees exist in Central America, they are registered as endangered. So, Cirino’s discovery is both a blessing and a responsibility. He will experiment with the honey he harvested by adding some to the second distillation of a batch of Eléctrico Espadín Mezcal, and we’ll see whether we can share that with you at some point in the future.

But Cirino is also determined to help the bees survive in San Baltazar Guelavila, and that will take careful management. Meliponid bees have a much smaller range than Apis honeybees, and they’ll need to find plenty of pollinating plants to feed their colony.

We’ll keep you informed of our progress.