Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses Xunan kab (Melipona beecheii) - a stingless, eusocial bee endemic to the Yucatan peninsula - asking what it means to be "specialist pollinator" in blasted landscapes.

Paper long abstract:

The population decline of Xunan kab (Melipona beecheii) - a stingless, eusocial bee endemic to the Yucatan peninsula - is a familiar story in a time of global insect biodiversity loss. In this paper, I ask what it means to be a “specialist pollinator” in blasted landscapes (Tsing 2014), centralizing the Xunan kab bee as a key actor in both ecological and cultural regeneration. Unlike the European honey bees (Apis mellifera) also cultivated in the region, Xunan kab has co-evolved with native flora in ways that make the species indispensable to the regeneration of degraded tropical forests. Ongoing conservation efforts have focused on promoting traditional beekeeping practices among indigenous Maya communities, for whom the Xunan kab bee has enormous cultural significance. However, the number of knowledgeable practitioners (and Melipona hives) continue to decline, requiring new understandings of how ecological and cultural loss are interconnected.

In this paper, I draw on ethnographic engagement with Xunan kab hives and their caregivers to explore pollinator sociality as a way of thinking through native bee conservation. Pollinators are transgressive beings, troubling conventional species lines in their involvement in extra-species propagation. A critical focus on pollination not only highlights non-human modes of interspecies relationality, but recasts them as mutualistic acts of co-survivance. Drawing on Greeson’s (2019) concept of “pollinator assemblages” as a multispecies unit of landscape analysis, I trace the circular interspecies relationships between Melipona beecheii and plants, people, and other bee species. In doing so, I explore how these shifting relationships influence conservation outcomes.