The Man Who Made a Pact With Wild Bees in Colombia's Amazon

[Judi Lynn]

Delio de Jesús Suárez Gómez, a member of the Indigenous Tucano community in Colombia, is combining ancestral knowledge with science to help pollinating bees survive the harsh conditions of life in the rainforest.

December 26, 2023
by Mongabay



By Jose Guarnizo

Delio de Jesús Suárez Gómez , a member of the Indigenous Tucano community in Colombia, is combining ancestral knowledge with science to help pollinating bees survive the harsh conditions of life in the rainforest.

In return, the bees provide honey for families, which is sold, and boosts the communities’ food and fruit supply through pollination.
The newly-formed group Asomegua (Asociación de Meliponicultores del Guainía) is the result of a decade of beekeeping in La Ceiba, a community on the banks of the Inírida River near the famous Mavicure Hills.

Bee populations around the world, which participate in the pollination of 75% of the world’s food crops, are on the decline, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).


LA CEIBA, Colombia — Nine years ago, Delio de Jesús Suárez Gómez made a pact with wild bees. The arrangement didn’t come easy, given that neither party knew each other well. The relationship was tense. When they crossed paths on the unspoiled trails of the forest in Guainía in eastern Colombia, the bees stood their ground, poised at the back of the hive, adopting a defensive position, ready to attack. Meanwhile, Delio Suárez kept moving, trying not to disturb the elusive calm of the forest that sheltered them.

Then, in an astonishing twist, the man offered the bees the kind of alliance that city dwellers visiting Guainía find difficult to understand. He promised to defend them from their rainforest opponents, such as ants and nomadic bees, which often invade their hives at night. In return, they would provide honey, an added purpose for the community, and a boost to their food and fruit supply.

The fact that their arrangement has, so far, worked perfectly does not mean it has always been a bed of roses — although it has been full of pollen-rich flowers. In order to attract bees to the area, Delio Suárez had to plant wild trees that would produce buds for them to feed on. The pollination process led his village, La Ceiba, to become a garden of myrsines (Myrsine guianensis), cominos (Aniba perutilis), monkey pots (Lecythis ollaria), and Alchornea triplinervia. Yellow, fuchsia, purple and white flowers are resplendent long through the year, as if the bees came to add color to the dull and dusty days of this part of Colombia, where in summer the sun shines mercilessly.

Negotiations between the humans and bees has been a process of mutual understanding, experimentation, trial and error, scientific method and wisdom spanning millennia, rather than simply a forest-based fairytale. This is the only way it has been able to work.

More:
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-man-who-made-a-pact-with-wild-bees-in-colombias-amazon/

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