Before the planting of sugar cane in the New World offered a challenge to the supremacy of honey as the source of supply for those craving sweets (and this period embraces the whole pre-Columbian era), the chief reliance of those living in this half of the world was the stingless bee, for the honeybee was introduced into this hemisphere only after the coming of the white man.

Columbus himself made early acquaintance with the native product. On his very first voyage he landed on Cuba and there he noted among the natural assets of the island "a variety of honey" that with virtual certainty was that of Melipona beecheii variety fulvipes Guerin, as no stingless bee other than this one occurs in Cuba.

In all probability the honey observed by Columbus in Cuba was wild honey, but in nearby Yucatan apiculture has had a long history. Gomara (1578, p. 200) indicated that honey was an article of sale in the great market place in Mexico City at the time of the Conquest and there were "sundry kindes." In Central America and South America, too, the natives were aware of its palatable appeal. To this day the honey of stingless bees is relished widely throughout the tropics of the New World and the Old, and a survey of its quality and its uses seems in order. A peculiarity of the honey of stingless bees is that it usually resists crystallization, often remaining in a fluid state indefinitely.

The eighteenth century Jesuit missionary, Florián Paucke (1942, p. 95), who served his order during 18 years in Paraguay, stated that especially from the beginning of November onward when the heat was intense, the Indians were accustomed to make a drink of honey and fruits which they consumed by day and by night, waking from their drunken slumber only to indulge again. On these drinking bouts there would sometimes be assembled more than a hundred Indians. 

Always these parties ended in uncontrolled demonstrations of violence, so that the women took the precaution while their husbands were drunk to conceal all weapons in order that upon emerging from their stupor the men might have only their bare fists with which to inflict damage on one another.

STINGLESS BEES (MELIPONIDAE) OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY VOLUME 90 NEW YORK : 1948

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