What is Yaax Che Forestry?

What does YaaxChe Forestry mean? (Sacred Tree Forestry *)

* Mayan Interpretation

Ya'ax'che is the symbol of Mayan life, it is where the first man was born, that's why they celebrated ceremonies and festivities under their branches, transmitting powers between rulers and shamans. In the Mayan worldview, the center is represented by a Ceiba and from it the three cosmic levels emerge: the Ceiba is born from the center of the earth, its trunks and branches support the sky and its roots penetrate the Mayan underworld.

In the Mayan language of the Yucatan Peninsula, Yaxché, is the name of the ceiba, sacred tree. The Mayan cosmogony mentions in one of the legends of Popol Vuh that the creative gods planted their respective sacred ceiba trees in the four directions of the cosmos, to the east the red ceiba, to the west the black ceiba, to the south the yellow ceiba and to the north the ceiba blanca They also planted a fifth ceiba in the center of all these courses, in their roots they located the Xibalbá or Mictlan that was the abode of the dead, at their base they placed the Kab or the earth that we inhabit living beings and on their trunk and branches the gods established their abode, while at the top of their cup inhabited the origin of all the gods in the form of a beautiful celestial quetzal.

What is Yaax che Forestry?

Yaax Che is a family company dedicated to sustainable beekeeping and agroforestry. Coming from the South of Veracruz, in the buffer zone of the Tuxtlas (image 1), we are producers of multiflora honey in the winter-spring season and wood (forests) to provide the supply chain (hives) in beekeeping.

Image 1. Green ring is the Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve, yellow ring corresponds to the ecological buffer zone of the reserve, red ring where our apiary is located.

We have a carpentry workshop and equipment to carry out a sustainable forest exploitation, committed to never logging in non-commercial forests, riverbanks or protected areas.

Honey Production

Our experience with beekeeping began with 1 box in November 2017, for the spring season of 2018 we already had 5 productive hives, we currently have 15 productive hives to start the year 2020. In October 2018 the apiary was updated in SENASICA.

In the 2019 season we had a production of 340 liters of honey, following the steps of the manual “GOOD PRACTICAL PRACTICES IN PRIMARY HONEY PRODUCTION”.

Characteristics of our honey:

• Our honey is 100% natural multiflora

• The harvesting process, from the apiary to the packaging, is based on the manual “GOOD PRACTICAL PRACTICES IN PRIMARY HONEY PRODUCTION”

• The extraction equipment is 100% food grade stainless steel

• The containers are new and sterilized

• Our honey like all, undergo a crystallization process over time

Good Beekeeping Practices (GBP), are the set of procedures, activities, conditions and controls that are applied in beekeeping production units, in order to reduce the risk of contamination caused by chemical, physical or biological hazards. Our company complies with the basic parameters of the manual "GOOD PRACTICAL PRACTICES IN PRIMARY HONEY PRODUCTION" distributed by the General Livestock Coordination (CGG) and the National Service of Health, Safety and Agro-Food Quality (SENASICA), certification in process. We are registered beekeepers in SENASICA.

Characteristics of our apiary (image 2):

• We never use chemical pesticides in the entire honey production process

• The ranch where the apiary is using ecological pesticide (Ecovet) for more than 3 years to fight mites in cattle

• The mount or grass in and around the apiary is torn off or pruned, we never use chemical herbicides

• The honey we produce is 100% natural and during the process we do not add any compound

Image 2. Hives of Yaax Che Forestry.

Beehive Production

Agroforestry is a productive system that integrates trees, livestock and pastures in the same productive unit. This system is aimed at improving land productivity and, at the same time, being ecologically sustainable.

11 years ago we started transforming a 1.5 Ha plot of cultivation (corn and beans) and pasture into a forest of timber trees (melina, cedar, spring, mahogany, matilisguate and others) in the southern region of Veracruz (image 3). During the process of the cultivation of trees (700 approx.), It was interspersed with 2 sowings of corn and beans so that the young trees took advantage of the nutrients of the cornfield. This forest and a later one, planted in 2014, of 120 of melina trees will be our base to produce beehives in the carpentry workshop in a sustainable way.

Image 3. Green squares are reforested plots. Yellow box our apiary.

However, Yaax Che Forestry provides tree felling jobs in urban and rural areas that, for safety reasons, high risk to the population, must be pruned or cut down, taking advantage of the wood from these works (image 4).

Image 4. Melina that put at risk the structure of a forest greenhouse at the Universidad Veracruzana, Acayucan School, Veracruz.

For the 2018 season, the carpentry workshop produced 35 complete breeding chambers and 45 honey production boxes (image 5).

Image 5. Breeding chambers and honey boxes.

We build our hives with tropical woods such as melines, spring, cedar, guanacaxtle and matilisguate in a sustainable way.

Contact:

Twitter: @YaaxCheForestry

Federal Programs and supports

The carpentry and beekeeping workshop that we develop as a company are integrated into the federal program Young people building the future, which supports us with 2 fellows to learn, for a year, how to develop honey production and the construction of hives.