Leydy Pech, an indigenous Mayan beekeeper, led a coalition that successfully halted Monsanto’s planting of “round-up ready” soybeans in southern Mexico. The genetically modified beans are not vulnerable to a specific herbicide, so the crop can be sprayed and only the weeds are killed. But the herbicide is carcinogenic and damages the delicate natural balance that supports the native stingless bees and also the Mayan way of life that depends on the bees. The Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the government violated the Mayans’ constitutional rights and suspended the planting of genetically modified soybeans. Because of the persistence of Pech and her coalition, in September 2017, Mexico’s Food and Agricultural Service revoked Monsanto’s permit to grow the soybeans in seven states. For her efforts, in 2020 Pech was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Leydy Pech’s powerful act is to PROTECT. She protects her bees, the environment that supports her bees, and her people who depend on the health and happiness of the bees. Read on and you will learn that these bees are remarkable and worth protecting. The stories reference a mode of value outside of money.

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The following is a statement by 2020 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Leydy Pech:

Today is a historic day for the Maya people.

My name is Leydy Aracely Pech Martín. I am from the community of Ich-ek, municipality of Hopelchén, State of Campeche.

I am grateful to the Goldman Foundation for recognizing the work of the Maya communities of Hopelchén in defense of their territory against industrial agriculture and GMOs.

The award gives me the opportunity to tell the world that the territories of indigenous peoples are being dispossessed by extractive megaprojects, agro-industry, tourism and others that strengthen a capitalist model that affects natural resources and our way of life.

I call on all governments and world leaders to rethink more comprehensive development models that respect and recognize human rights, autonomy, self-determination of Indigenous peoples and ancestral heritage.

Quoted from https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/leydy-pech/

Disrupting an Ancient Industry

The state of Campeche in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula features an ancient mixture of forests, beekeeping, local agriculture, and deep-seated Mayan culture. Mexico is the world’s sixth largest producer of honey, and 40% of the nation’s honey production originates from the Yucatán Peninsula. In Campeche, 25,000 families—especially within indigenous Mayan communities—depend on honey production for their livelihoods.

Beekeeping is also integral to Mayan culture and a key factor in the protection of Campeche’s forests. Recently, with the rise of industrial agriculture, the state lost nearly 94,000 acres of forest—the highest rate of deforestation in Mexico.

In 2000, Monsanto began growing small, experimental plots of genetically modified (GM) soybeans in Mexico. In 2010 and 2011, these projects were elevated to “pilot projects” by the government. The GM soybean used by Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) is known as “Roundup Ready,” a reference to the plant’s programmed genetic tolerance to high doses of the herbicide Roundup (also a Monsanto product). The main ingredient in Roundup is glyphosate, a probable carcinogen that is also linked to miscarriages and birth defects.

In 2012, the Mexican government granted Monsanto permits to plant GM soybeans in seven Mexican states, including Campeche and the Yucatán, without consultation by local communities. It was soon apparent that the GM crops were contaminating local honey in Campeche, threatening the food supply, environment, and livelihoods of the Mayan communities.

A Mayan Lady of Honey

Leydy Pech, 55, is a proud Mayan woman who makes her living as a beekeeper in a collective of Mayan women. She was born and raised in Hopelchén, where the practice of beekeeping goes back centuries for the Mayan community. Pech has focused her beekeeping practice on a rare native bee species, Melipona beecheii. She is also a promoter of sustainable development for rural Mayan communities as a member of Koolel-Kab/Muuchkambal, an organic farming and agroforestry cooperative composed solely of Mayan women.

Beekeepers Fight Back

In June 2012, in response to the planting of GM soybeans in the region, Pech brought beekeepers, NGOs, and environmentalists together in a coalition known as Sin Transgenicos (Without GMOs). That same month, Pech led the group in filing a lawsuit against the Mexican government to stop the planting of GM soybeans. Their case rested on the fact that neither the government nor Monsanto consulted indigenous communities before approving the permits—in violation of the Mexican Constitution and International Labor Organization’s Convention 169.

Pech reached out to academic institutions for assistance documenting the impacts of GM soy cultivation on honey, the environment, and people. As a result, the Universidad Autonoma carried out a study of GM soybean production in Campeche—where Monsanto had conducted a pilot project—confirming that GM soy pollen was present in the local honey supply. The Universidad Autonoma and the UN Development Programme also charted the impacts of glyphosate, finding traces of the herbicide in the water supply of Hopelchén, and in the urine of the town’s residents.

With this data in hand, Pech and her Mayan collective began an outreach and education campaign to local communities and government officials about the negative impacts of GM soybean production. They organized a series of workshops for activists and organizations to exchange information and research, launched petitions, and arranged simultaneous protests in seven Mayan ceremonial centers across the Yucatán Peninsula, with approximately 2,000 participants.

In November 2015, in response to the coalition’s lawsuit, Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the government must consult indigenous communities before planting GM soybeans. The ruling effectively canceled Monsanto’s permits and prohibited the planting of GM soybeans in Campeche and Yucatán. And, in September 2017, thanks to Pech’s organizing, Mexico’s Food and Agricultural Service revoked Monsanto’s permit to grow genetically modified soybeans in seven states, including Campeche and Yucatán. This decision marks the first time that the Mexican government has taken official action to protect communities and the environment from GM crops.

Pech and the coalition’s historic fight is precedent-setting for Mexico, and already a model for other indigenous movements struggling to preserve indigenous rights and land management. Carrying out a “lucha de la vida” (a struggle for life), she brought together a diverse group of activists and stakeholders and organized thousands of people through outreach, assemblies, and petitions. An unassuming but powerful guardian of Mayan land and traditions, Pech experienced frequent discrimination and was widely underestimated: upon seeing her in person following her court victory, a lawyer for Monsanto remarked that he couldn’t believe that this little woman beat them.

A story about Regal Lady Bees, or Xunan Cab

Quoted from https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/meliponini-honey

EFRAIN CAB, A 34-YEAR-OLD BEEKEEPER who runs a hotline for stingless bees in need, stood in front of the wall of a hotel in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, with a hammer in his hand.

He had responded to an emergency text from 11-year-old Eugenia, who had secretly contacted Cab from her mother’s phone. She wanted to save the bees her parents intended to fumigate.

Eugenia now pointed at a small hole in a brick wall.

“Put pieces of tissue inside your ear, and do not squash them when they get entangled in your hair. They’re just defending themselves,” Cab said with a stern look.

With precise movements, he started hammering the wall. As he cautiously pulled out the debris, a swarm of stingless bees poured out, flying into his beard, hair, and ears. Undeterred, Cab surgically removed the alien-looking hive and placed it inside a wooden box he had brought along. Cab’s face soon took on a sheen of sweat, as he strove not to hurt the swarm. Before closing the lid of the box, he added in the dazed bees who had not left the shelter, one by one, and made sure the queen was in the hive.

“Now they have to rest,” Cab said, visibly exhausted.

There are around 500 species of Meliponini stingless bees in tropical and subtropical areas around the world. 47 live in Mexico, and the most famous bee in the Yucatán peninsula is Melipona beecheii, known by the Mayans as Xunan Kab, or the Regal Lady Bee.

Meliponini honey is rare and expensive. In the United States, 250 grams of Meliponini honey costs around $50. Stingless bees live in small colonies and produce just over three pounds of honey per year, while their stinging counterparts produce almost 20 times more. They store their liquid honey in small waxy pots built into their hives. Its flavor is an explosion of acidity and sweetness, paired with an intense flowery fragrance.

But Cab doesn’t aim to profit off the bees for their honey. Loading the hive into his car, he drove it back to his home in the Playa del Carmen suburbs, where he runs Trigonario Urbano Cab, a hospital for rescued stingless bees. The rescued hive would rest and recuperate amongst 60 other colonies, before Cab would take them to their final home: a sanctuary he has built in the middle of the Mayan jungle.

“Cab means bee,” Cab tells me, adding that he learned about bees from his father and grandfather, both beekeepers themselves. In fact, he claims that all his ancestors were Meliponini beekeepers. But it wasn’t until 2001 that he started taking care of his own hives. A friend working in construction asked him to pick up a colony that otherwise would have been destroyed. Then he saved a second hive, and then a third. News of his bee operation started spreading. Since then, Cab the beekeeper has saved more than 100 hives.

Jorge Gonzalez Acereto is a bee expert and former professor at the Autonomous University of Yucatán. A beekeeper himself with 40 colonies, Acereto notes that Meliponini bees were central to the Mayan cosmogony, or their vision of how the universe came to be.

“The Mayans believed that the bees were a gift from the gods,” Acereto says. Ancient Mayans thought that nectar was a concentration of the sun’s power, which bees transferred into their honey. Mayans cared for bees religiously, and the bees, in turn, gave them wax, honey, and pollinated crops.

Maria Luisa Dorantes, Cab’s mother, explains that Mayan descendants use Meliponini honey primarily as a medicine. “If you get a bad cut which doesn’t heal, you wrap the honey around it and it’s gone in three days,” Dorantes says. Daughter of a herbadera, a Mayan herbalist, Dorantes notes that the honey is also used to treat a variety of diseases, including cataracts, ulcers, and diabetes. Her claim is supported by bacteriologists, who have studied how Meliponini honey’s acidity and high levels of bacillus effectively inhibit pathogenic bacterial growth.

Acereto explains that beekeepers provided a central social service for the ancient Mayan community, by providing honey for free when the sick needed it. Beekeeping was a charitable activity, for which they could not ask for anything in return.

“This is the inheritance that I have, and I have to protect it,” Cab says. He makes his living as a construction worker, but spends all his free time with the bees. Cab doesn’t often sell his honey, and usually harvests it for his family and to help others in need.

With the colonization of the peninsula in the 17th century, the Spaniards introduced Apis mellifera, the common stinging bee, which aggressively invaded Meliponini territory. Many beekeepers began rearing the new bees for their higher honey production. Just a few domestic hives of Meliponini, kept in the remotest Mayan villages, survived the change.

Cab’s untiring efforts to rescue hives is essential work. Ricardo Ayala Barajas, a bee taxonomist at the Biology Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said that although there is a cultural push to protect stingless bees, they are still endangered. Barajas names pesticides, deforestation, and careless beekeeping practices as causes of the decline.

“We’ll reach a point of no return soon,” Barajas says.

Efrain Cab is not the only stingless beekeeper. Meliponini honey is highly lucrative. Acereto explains that as demand for the precious honey went up, foreigners and greedy beekeepers began venturing into the jungle to cut down trees to get to Meliponini hives. New beekeepers do not seem to understand the ancestral techniques used to harvest the colonies, which is key to keeping bees healthy. Many end up killing the fragile hives, Acereto adds.

Valerio, Cab’s father, says that not everybody is suited for the task of keeping stingless bees. Tradition requires a certain purity on the part of the beekeeper. “You cannot take care of the bee without being ready,” he says. “You cannot drink alcohol and you need harmony within the family. If bees feel the tension, they go away or die.”

After a period of rest and rebuilding, Cab took Eugenia’s hive back into the forest. A wooden canopy, constructed by Cab, shelters the harmless stingless bees. It is hidden deep within the jungle, where, legend has it, spirits and forgotten gods still roam.

Cab is now teaching his four-year-old son to care for the bees. His hope is that there will be someone to safeguard the bees, when he is gone. “This is what I will leave to my children,” Cab says. “Because I don’t believe in money.”