Xtabentún

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

The wide funnel is open to any visitor, and the Melipona beecheii kept in Maya log hives works it alongside introduced honey bees — the same plant feeding two very different beekeeping traditions.

Worth knowing

A short intense morning flow across the Yucatán scrub, worked by both honey bees and the region's managed stingless bees.

Flowering

In flower

November to January (northern hemisphere)

Dry-season flowering, which is when the Yucatán honey year peaks.

When nectar flows

Heavy and concentrated into the morning — the flowers open at dawn and are finished by midday, so foraging is compressed into a few hours.

What it does to the honey

Gives a pale, aromatic honey with a floral and faintly aniseed lift that the liqueur made from it leans on directly.

Growing it

Conditions

Frost-free warmth, full sun and something to climb over.

Size

3-8 m of annual growth.

Native range

Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, abundant in the Yucatán peninsula.

• Vigorous to the point of smothering in its native range.
• The seeds contain ergoline alkaloids and had a documented ritual use in Mesoamerica; the honey does not carry them.

What it looks like

A vigorous twining climber smothering hedges and scrub with masses of white funnel-shaped flowers, each open for a single morning, borne in dense clusters through the dry season.