Female Maya Bee Character: Meliponia and Trigonia the Maya bee
Lots of genera and species of Maya bees in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador (and many more south through Brazil). But for the Mayan world of insects, the diversity of size of bees is remarkable. We see this first-hand since Maya bees make their tunnel-like nests (hives) in the wall in front of the door to our office.
Since the Queen Bee is a rather important component of any bee colony, we look forward to having lots of female Maya bee personalities.
Whether in Europe or USA, if you ask most people which is the best known bee cartoon character they reply “Maya the Bee” (Biene Maja in German language original). Since most bees are female, this is a female cartoon character, albeit not the queen bee.
If you look for “famous bee characters” on the Internet you find some rather silly results, such as the Bee Gees (whose songs don’t have much to do with honey bees). Of most results from a Google search, actually the only bee character that I recognized was Maya the Bee of movie, TV, and book fame.
Our goal at the non-profit FLAAR Mesoamerica organization in Guatemala is to provide a series of illustrated books on family values (social values, characteristics which can help families stay united, and can help individuals both survive and succeed in a highly competitive world).
Plus, in recent years bullies and bullying in schools has become a well known issue. And in many movies and TV series you see cliques (who join together to make fun of other children in their school).
Our goal is to use Maya, the Q’eqchi’ Mayan girl, and her village friend Victor, to survive and succeed in their world. These two local children become heroes and gradually will become known world wide.
Meliponia the Maya bee has as a parallel goal to be as successful as Maya the Bee. After all, Meliponia is a real Maya bee of the Maya mountains, rain forests and fields. So Meliponia the Maya bee of Guatemala has inspiration to be an educational role model to children (and adults) around the world. We especially look forward to our Maya bee to become in Germany as well known as Biene Maja.
Our first installment of Meliponia the Maya bee is to document that the word Maya is a generic word in minimally three languages:
- Sanskrit of India,
- Mayan languages of Guatemala-Mexico-Belize-Honduras-El Salvador in Mesoamerica
- The popular girls name Maya, especially in Eastern Europe.
Plus Maya is the name of a popular 3D animation software of the respected company AutoDesk.
Trigonia is another friendly female bee
Since there are so many different sizes, shapes, and colors of stingless bees in Mexico and Guatemala, we have more than one Maya bee character: Trigonia is the second one.
Bees of many sizes, shapes, and habits in Guatemala
There are several hundred species of bees in Guatemala. We focus on bees of the genus Trigona and genus Melipona. Bumblebees and Africanized bees tend to be of the genus Apis.
Trigona is written in one article as Trigonini, but when I Google Trinonini, there are no results. So I stay with Trigona. Meliponines is sort of a generic word for stingless bees in general (so including bees of Trigona genus). In technical terms Meliponines is a tribe.
Melipona beecheii are commonly found kept in logs hanging from the walls of Mayan houses in remote communities. It is my impression that most “domesticated” bees in Yucatan and Guatemala are Melipona, not Trigona. But since the bees in front of our office are Trigona, we also include them in our storyboards.
But I use the spelling Meliponia (with an i) to distinguish our Maya bee from the entomologist designation Melipona. Same with her associate, Trigonia.
