IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB214975419

Innovation in the Tropics: The Persistence of Beekeeping Knowledge in the Yucatan Peninsula, 1780-1950 (2023)

Angélica Márquez-Osuna (Author)
Laveaga, Gabriela Soto (Advisor)

Harvard University
Laveaga, Gabriela Soto
Publication date: 2023
Language: English

URI: https://www.proquest.com/docview/2892534984/abstract/BE2AC324D0B54541PQ/85?%20Theses&parentSessionId=i2N8%2Bb518TzDNV13XvZK9swIEn2l1Ul3V2HuzXYAsHY%3D&sourcetype=Dissertations%20

Publication Date: 2023
Physical Details: 248

Outside Links

Mayan civilization Ecological knowledge; Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) Invasion biology; invasive species Bees; apiculture 20th century, early 19th century 18th century Yucatán (Mexico)

This dissertation examines the history of beekeeping in the Yucatán Peninsula, México, from the late colonial period to the first half of the twentieth century. It illustrates how beekeepers have interacted with different species of bees to extract honey and beeswax, under different agricultural regimes. It explores how the method called modern apiculture—the most widely-accepted among the world’s beekeepers since the twentieth century—is based on the breeding of the honeybee, or Apis mellifera, a European native that did not exist in the Americas prior to European colonization. Although Apis mellifera had been expanding across the New World due to human-assisted migration since the beginning of colonization, it was not until the nineteenth century that apiculturists were able to relocate the species extensively and systematically from Europe to northern regions of the United States. From there it rapidly spread south to Florida during the late nineteenth century, reaching Cuba and México in the early twentieth century. A few decades later, Apis mellifera had come to populate the entire continent and was the quintessential pollinator and producer of industrial honey, not just in the region but across the whole world. I argue that in the twentieth century, beekeepers, entomologists, and apiculturists relocated Apis mellifera to environments that were already rich in bee biodiversity, such as southeastern México, where Yucatec Maya communities had developed a sophisticated system of beekeeping with the stingless bee Melipona beecheii, which is also capable of producing large quantities of honey and wax and has been bred for such purposes for over 2,500 years. Furthermore, this dissertation illustrates how Melipona beecheii has been ecologically, culturally, and economically important in the Yucatán Peninsula for centuries. By reconstructing how beekeepers have interacted with different bee species for honey and beeswax production under different agricultural regimes, I reconstruct the role of innovation among local experts, the resistance patterns of beekeepers and bees in the economy, territory, and society over the centuries, and the impact of industrialization processes in tropical landscapes.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB214975419

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Angélica Márquez-Osuna; (2024)
Beekeeping from the South: The Yucatán Peninsula's “Industrious Bee” and the Rise of Modern Apiculture (/p/isis/citation/CBB045265641/)

Article Matthew Restall; (2019)
Creating “Belize”: The Mapping and Naming History of a Liminal Locale (/p/isis/citation/CBB142144634/)

Article Chelsea Fisher; (2023)
Monumentality as traditional ecological knowledge in the northern Maya lowlands (/p/isis/citation/CBB368622810/)

Article Alexandra Ludewig; (2023)
John Staer (1850–1933): the patronym behind Eucalyptus staeri, the Albany Blackbutt (/p/isis/citation/CBB991875492/)

Book Ulrike Kirchberger; Brett M. Bennett; (2020)
Environments of Empire: Networks and Agents of Ecological Change (/p/isis/citation/CBB722827122/)

Thesis Christopher R. Conz; (2017)
"Wisdom Does Not Live in One House": Compiling Environmental Knowledge in Lesotho, Southern Africa, C.1880-1965 (/p/isis/citation/CBB352175879/)

Article Martino Lorenzo Fagnani; (2021)
Studying “useful plants” from Maria Theresa to Napoleon: Continuity and invisibility in agricultural science, northern Italy, the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century (/p/isis/citation/CBB606760697/)

Article Paulina Oszajca; (2016)
Oro Liquido: Storia dell’uso terapeutico del miele in Polonia (/p/isis/citation/CBB658542534/)

Book de Jaime Gómez, José; de Jaime Lóren, José Maria; (2002)
Historia de la Apicultura Española: Desde 1492 hasta 1808 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001214097/)

Thesis Ebert, Adam W.; (2009)
Hive Society: The Popularization of Science and Beekeeping in the British Isles, 1609--1913 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561209/)

Book McCrea, Heather L.; (2010)
Diseased Relations: Epidemics, Public Health, and State-Building in Yucatán, Mexico, 1847--1924 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001200622/)

Article McBirney, Alexander; Lorenz, Volker; (2003)
Karl Sapper: Geologist, Ethnologist, and Naturalist (/p/isis/citation/CBB000470483/)

Article Jessica Wang; (2019)
Plants, Insects, and the Biological Management of American Empire: Tropical Agriculture in Early Twentieth-Century Hawai‘i (/p/isis/citation/CBB295758026/)

Article Middleton, Karen; (2012)
Renarrating a Biological Invasion: Historical Memory, Local Communities and Ecologists (/p/isis/citation/CBB001231331/)

Book Jeannie N. Shinozuka; (2022)
Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890–1950 (/p/isis/citation/CBB310184057/)

Article Few, Martha; (2010)
Circulating Smallpox Knowledge: Guatemalan Doctors, Maya Indians and Designing Spain's Smallpox Vaccination Expedition, 1780--1803 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001023052/)

Book David Sowell; (2015)
Medicine on the Periphery: Public Health in Yucatán, Mexico, 1870–1960 (/p/isis/citation/CBB234226159/)

Book John Robert Gust; Jennifer P. Mathews; (2020)
Sugarcane and Rum: The Bittersweet History of Labor and Life on the Yucatán Peninsula (/p/isis/citation/CBB040175628/)

Article Paola Peniche Moreno; (2016)
Terapéutica para tratar el cólera en Yucatán, México (1833-1853). Medicina fisiológica, herbolaria local y régimen moral (/p/isis/citation/CBB549393278/)

Book Paola Peniche Moreno; (2016)
El cólera morbus en Yucatán: medicina y salud pública 1833-1853 (/p/isis/citation/CBB180798247/)