The jobón
A hollowed log section closed with discs at both ends, stacked horizontally on racks under a shelter. The hive of Maya meliponiculture, and a design that solves the specific problem of harvesting a nest built in pots rather than in comb.
Current status
Practised, declining
Still practised and measurably contracting — fewer practitioners, less territory, or a shorter season than the earlier record describes.
Still in use and falling in number alongside the practice it belongs to, with box hives replacing logs in the commercial and revival sectors.
The design
A section of trunk is hollowed and closed at each end with a disc of stone or hardwood, sealed with clay or with cerumen taken from the bees themselves. A small hole in the side takes the entrance tube the colony builds. Hives lie horizontally, stacked in rows on a rack under a thatched or tiled shelter.
The horizontal orientation with removable ends is what makes non-destructive harvest possible. A meliponine nest is organised with brood in the centre and storage pots towards the ends, so opening one end reaches honey pots without disturbing the brood spiral. Stone end discs survive archaeologically where the logs do not, which is how the hive is attested for periods that left no wood.
Why the log and not a box
Transferring an established meliponine colony is genuinely risky: the brood is built as a spiral or a cluster attached to the cavity, and moving it can destroy the structure and the colony with it. A jobón that has held bees for decades is therefore left alone, and box hives are populated by division or by new colonies rather than by transfer.
There is a second reason, and it is not technical. A jobón is inherited. It carries the marks of the person who cut it and the memory of who kept it, and in a practice where a colony can outlive its keeper the hive is a family object. Replacing it with a plywood box is a decision about more than equipment.
What this page does not claim
That surviving stone discs date the hive form precisely, or that every log hive in the region is old. Discs are durable and logs are not, so the archaeological signal is indirect, and modern jobones are still made.
In short
- A hollowed log closed with discs, lying horizontally on a rack under a shelter.
- Opening one end reaches honey pots without disturbing the brood spiral.
- Stone end discs survive where the wood does not, which is how the form is attested archaeologically.
Sources
- Stingless Bees of Mexico: The Biology, Management and Conservation of an Ancient Heritage — Springer (2018) · Monograph
- Ecology and Natural History of Tropical Bees — Cambridge University Press (1989) · Monograph
- The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.