EDITOR’S NOTE: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
In the heavy heat of Yucatán, where the land holds memory and flowers depend on ever more vulnerable pollinators, a group of women is waging a quiet yet vital struggle: the preservation of the Melipona bee.
If bees disappeared from the planet, half of all plant species and 75% of the products people consume — which depend on pollination — would vanish, according to the United Nations Development Program. And if the Melipona bee were to disappear, it would disrupt the balance of the tropical ecosystems and rainforests of Mexico and Central America.
That’s why the so-called “sacred Maya bee” matters so much to life in southeastern Mexico, where the Melipona Bee Guardians Network, locally known as “Muuch Ka’jal Kaabo’ob,” works to care for, breed and protect this threatened native species.
The members of this network see themselves as guardians, and in caring for this species they also safeguard knowledge passed down from generation to generation.
