[Sca-cooks] Secret Life of... next appearance

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Stefan wrote
>I just got through watching the "Secret Life of honey" episode.

SNIP

>They also mentioned in one of their text-only snippets just before a
>commercial the comment that the bees native to America do not make
>honey. We had a discussion earlier where I mentioned that the (honey)
>bee was a European import and someone corrected me saying there were
>native American bees. So it this TV comment is  true then we may both
>be right. If the American bee doesn't make honey though, I'm wondering
>what it uses for food or whatever the European bees use honey for.

Well, i trust Sophie D. Coe when she says that certain words in 
languages of the Mayans and the Aztecs refer to honey, and when she 
discusses Pre-Columbian Meso-American apiculture.

Native bees don't make as much honey, and they aren't as 
"domesticable" as the European honey bee, but it seems to me it's 
pretty clear there was honey in the Americas before the arrival of 
Europeans and their bees.

Here's what i wrote back in January:

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Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:03:57 -0800
From: lilinah at earthlink.net
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Honey in Meso-America

OK, i found where the Sophie D. Coe book, "America's First Cuisines",
was hiding...

She notes, on p. 89 of the chapter titled "Aztec Ingredients" that
Aztec warehouses received annually 2,200 pots of bee's honey.

On p. 116, of the chapter "Aztec Cooks and Menus", Coe notes that in
the writings of Sahagun are mentioned honey tamales, bee tamales, and
(p. 117) tortillas made with honey. Hernandez mentions among the
nixtamalized maize gruels, which were drunk as nourishing beverages,
one with 1/10th part maguey syrup called nequatolli, and one with
chili and honey called nechillatolli. An atolli of red amaranth
rather than maize, with honey was hoauhatolli.

In the chapter "The Maya and the Explorers", on pp. 125-126
"One thing the expedition of Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba noticed
on the island of Cozumel, and later in Yucatan, may still be seen in
those places today by the visitor. It was, and is, an excellent place
for honey production. Today the honey is produced by the European
honey bee (Apis mellifera) , but prior to its introduction there were
plenty of indigenous bees (Melipona sp., Trigona sp.) to do the job.
Bee yards with thousands of hives are described by early travelers.
Hernandez de Cordoba was said to have seen many wooden hives and to
have been brought calabashes full of white and excellent honey. Honey
was one of the principal products of the country and along with
locally produced cotton cloth was traded far and wide in Mesoamerica.
Among the Maya it was used to sweeten some of the maize drinks, the
posolli and atolli [i mentioned in a previous post], and to make an
exceedingly important alcoholic ritual beverage, balche'. The fact
that a good part of one of the four surviving Maya books, the Madrid
Codex, is concerned with bees and beekeeping underscores their
importance.

"Was this honey used to make preserves or boiled sugar goods? We know
that watery honey was cooked to make it more storable, so that
combinations like boiled honey and squash seeds or boiled honey and
toasted maize might be pre-Columbian..."

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Urtatim, formerly Anahita