What is the history of bee keeping in mesoamerica?

The early history of American beekeeping is obscure, but as far as we can tell, it probably developed in the Yucatan peninsula, which was the centre of beekeeping for the last 2,000 years in Mesoamerica (even today, it's the main honey-producing region of Mexico). Noting that the European honeybee is a post-Columbian introduction to the Americas, American beekeeping began with native bees, which are still kept today. The native bees available in Mesoamerica (and tropical South America) are about 15 species of the genus Melipona and other genera in the tribe Meliponini (of which Melipona is the best-known member). Melipona beecheii is the preferred species today in Mexico, and probably has been for a long time - the Maya called it "royal lady bee". Melipona yucatanica is the next-most commonly-kept species. Other species are sometimes kept, such as Scaptotrigona mexicana which is common in Mexico. A different range of species are kept in South America (mostly in Brazil). The tribe Meliponini has over 500 species, and is spread over the tropics worldwide, with species in Africa, South Asia, SE Asia, and Australia; not all of these species produce enough honey to be attractive to keep (other than as pets, which some people do).

The keeping of these bees is called "meliponiculture", from the name of the tribe, to distinguish it from "apiculture", the keeping of honeybees (i.e., bees of the genus Apis).

Until recently, bee colonies were usually captured from the wild - these bees are tamed rather than domesticated. This is one reason why the early history of Mesoamerican beekeeping is obscure - since the bees aren't domesticated, we can't determine how long ago they were domesticated. The bees from kept hives are identical to wild bees, and so are their products. Thus, the presence of honey in the diet (e.g., as shown to have been the case in the Tehuacan valley about 2000 years ago, from analysis of coprolites) or the use of beeswax aren't evidence of beekeeping, since these can be collected from the wild (however, large quantities of honey and/or wax are a good sign of beekeeping). This is also why a variety of species is kept, including in the the same region - what lives in the wild is what you keep in your hives.

The other reason why the early history is obscure is that the main type of hive such bees were (and still are) kept in are hollow logs about 2-3 feet long:

http://www.scielo.org.mx/img/revistas/ecm/v44/a4f10.jpg

Wood doesn't survive well in tropical conditions. Notably, the oldest Mayan hive found so far, about 2000 years old, is ceramic, of cylindrical shape, imitating the shape of the more common log hives:

http://www.scielo.org.mx/img/revistas/ecm/v44/a4f9.jpg

This is our earliest evidence so far for Mesoamerican beekeeping, but the practice is almost certainly much older.

The main products of beekeeping were honey, wax, and resin. All of these were used as trade/tribute/tax items. Melipona honey typically has a higher water content than Apis honey, and has a relatively poor shelf life. Early Spanish historical sources note that the honey was boiled to reduce the water content to improve the shelf life, and make it a more useful trade product. This process is still used today. Honey was used as a sweetener, and as a medicine. It also appears to have been an important ritual item, with honey/bee gods worshipped (indicating the social and economic important of beekeeping) and bee products were involved in this worship. Apart from Spanish language sources, honey trade/tribute and beekeeping gods appear in Mayan and Aztec codices, showing that beekeeping was important in these ways by AD1200, and continued to be important into the colonial era.

In pre-Columbian times, a major use of wax was for lost-wax casting. Notably, highland Peru, outside the range of beekeeping, made much less use of casting than Mesoamerica. During the colonial era, wax continued to be an important trade and tax item, partly due to the Catholic Church's burning hunger for beeswax candles. In one tax collection, in 1549, about 150 villages paid about 3 tons of honey and almost 300 tons of wax as taxes.

The resin, made by the bees in their hive-building, was used as a glue.

The introduction of sugar cane provided a cheaper source of sugars, and reduced the importance of honey as a sweetener. Still, honey continued to be used in the diet, and as a medicine, even if it was less economically important (to some extent, a by-product of the beeswax industry). One difficult-to-replace use of honey was for the production of the psychoactive beverage balché, which was made by soaking the bark of the balché tree (Lonchocarpus violaceus), which contains hallucinogenic compounds, in honey, and then fermenting this mix. This could be consumed as a drink, or taken as an enema (in which case, the more rapid absorption into the bloodstream would have enhanced the psychoactive effect). The psychoactive effect was apparently enhanced by placing the hives near the ololiuhqui plant (*Turbina corymbosa) which produced a psychoactive/hallucinogenic honey. (Similar honeys are used as entheogens and medicines elsewhere in Mexico, without the extra step of being made into a fermented drink.)

In about 1900, the European honeybee Apis mellifera was introduced to the Yucatan. As these bees are more productive honey-wise than the native bees, many beekeepers switched species, with the increased productivity compensating for the disadvantage the these bees sting (unlike the native bees, which are stingless). However, meliponiculture continued as a major source of honey in the Yuctana, until a major decline began in the 1990s, leading to a 93% decline by 2015. In turn, this has led to efforts to restore meliponiculture to its former glory. Not all of this decline in meliponiculture is due to beekeepers turning to the more productive Apis mellifera - deforestation has contributed a lot, along with hurricane damage, and competition between wild native bees and feral Apis mellifera.

Trivia: the first European report on stingless bee honey in the Americas was in 1557, when Hans Staden described his captivity by the Tupinambá people of coastal Brazil, in his book Warhaftige Historia und beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der Wilden Nacketen (True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil); the honey was probably collected from wild hives.