Ah Muzen Cab- Maya GodDeity"God of Bees"

The Bee God

The Madrid Codex devotes several almanac pages to the keeping of bees. In one scene, Ah Muzen Cab descends headfirst from the sky with compound eyes and insect wings, bearing honeycomb in his hands. In another, he crouches over a hive, guarding it. The almanacs map these images to specific divisions of the sacred calendar, marking when hives could be opened and when they had to be left alone.

Yucatan beekeepers raised the native stingless bee, Melipona beecheii, in hollow log hives called jobones, sealed at both ends with mud and stone discs. The bees entered through a small hole in the center. Each hive cluster had a shrine where the keeper made offerings to Ah Muzen Cab before harvesting, and the god's festivals fell at the turns of the beekeeping year. The Melipona produced less honey than the European honeybee that arrived after Spanish contact, but Maya beekeepers prized it for its thin consistency and sharp, slightly sour taste. They used it in medicine, in cooking, and above all in ritual.

Honey and Balché

The fermented honey drink called balché was the sacred beverage of Maya ceremony. Beekeepers mixed honey with water and strips of bark from the Lonchocarpus tree, then left the mixture to ferment in canoes hollowed from single logs. Diego de Landa, writing in the 1560s, recorded that the Maya drank it during festivals of purification and divination, often to the point of stupor. Priests poured balché over idol stones and onto the ground as libation. Participants consumed it to open themselves to contact with the gods.

Honey also accompanied the dead. Excavated Maya tombs have yielded ceramic vessels still bearing traces of honey offerings, placed beside the body for the journey through Xibalba. At Tulum, on the Caribbean cliffs, Postclassic sculptors carved a figure plunging headfirst above temple doorways, wings spread, in the posture the Madrid Codex gives to Ah Muzen Cab. Whoever passed beneath entered under the Bee God's protection.