“Removing supers during harvest” – from Speck & Wulfrath’s 1955 bee guide
One of the world’s largest honey farms was a Mexican outfit started by a couple of guys on holidays from Germany. The Second World War broke out while they were rambling around the Mexican coast, so they stayed for an extended vacation. That vacation turned out to be the rest of their long lives.
Miel Carlota was began as a hobby when the two friends, Arturo Wulfrath and Dr Juan Speck, picked up five hives from a farmer. Apparently looking for an interesting way to make a living and contribute to their new country, they became beekeepers. According to their company representatives at Miel Carlota, it all started on this day (June 5th) in 1943 when those five hives came into their possession.
They were incredibly progressive beekeepers. Their part of Mexico historically produced 15 kilos (35 pounds) of honey per hive when the young men arrived. Their first hives were in rustic boxes. These were hard to manage and contributed to Mexico’s low honey production. They transferred the bees to modern Langstroth-style equipment and learned to move hives to seasonal blossoms. By 1958, Miel Carlota, headquartered in Cuernavaca, operated at least 20,000 hives of honey bees. According to a Waco Tribune-Herald reporter who interviewed Dr Speck, the business produced six million pounds of honey a year. This would be a yield of 300 pounds per colony, which is unlikely, but not impossible. (Bee colonies typically produce between 50 and 250 pounds annually.) Speck indicated to the Waco paper (January 26, 1958) that they operated 318 apiaries. Elsewhere, Miel Carlota indicated they had about 100 hives per apiary, which would imply over 30,000 hives. Others have stated that the company had 50,000 colonies during the 1960s. The fuzziness around the numbers may be due to seasonal variations and whether or not their vast collection of mating nucs were counted as hives.
Regardless their challenges managing such a huge number of hives, Miel Carlota was among the most innovative and progressive honey companies in the world. They designed and patented unique hive equipment, build their own wax foundation mill, and wrote books which educated thousands in practical beekeeping. I have a copy of one of their first texts, Pequena Guia para el Apicultor (Small Guide for the Beekeeper), written in 1955 by Speck and Wulfrath. The book is refreshingly open in sharing practical and even privileged details about their techniques in successful Mexican beekeeping. For example, the authors disclose their best choice for hive equipment and, at the end of the book, they itemize expenses for establishing one’s own beekeeping enterprise – complete with all the dollars and cents in an investment.
By the mid-1950s, Miel Carlota was the world’s largest queen producer. Dr Eva Crane, a bee science writer and researcher, visited the outfit in 1957. Dr Speck took this picture of Dr Crane as she watched Miel Carlota beekeepers grafting queen cells in the shade of one of the company’s trucks. In addition to queen rearing, the firm also led the world in royal jelly production. They invented a vacuum pumping system that sucked the food out of day-old queen cells. They could produce a tonne of royal jelly from 2,000 hives in three months. Their surplus helped create a craze for the stuff as a dubious health food. One of Miel Carlota’s biggest royal jelly fans was Pope Pius, according to Dr Speck in that 1958 Waco Tribune interview. (The pope died a few weeks after that interview, so by the next year, his endorsement was less convincing.)
Below is a picture taken at one of Miel Carlota’s queen rearing stations. It’s from their guide, Pequena Guia para el Apicultor. The instructional point here is that even in 1955, when this book was published, they knew that they needed hives dedicated to drone production, as it says in the caption, “Hives for raising queens. On the left, hives for drones.” It took most North American queen breeders another decade of so to really catch on to the need to introduce and promote selected drone stock into their breeding programs. I still know some who don’t understand the need! 😦
In 1973, 1974, and 1975, Canadian beekeepers imported thousands of these skillfully produced Mexican queens. (For example, 4,500 queens in 1974.) However, the lineage was tropical, so the Alberta government pioneered an effort to have winter-hardy Canadian stock sent to Miel Carlota for breeding stock. Here’s the Alberta government press release from 1975:
November 3, 1975
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEXICAN QUEEN BEE PROJECT
Three hundred honeybee queens left Alberta by air recently for Mexico! Their destinations were a number of commercial Mexican beekeepers, including Miel Carlota, the largest queen breeder in the world. Alberta Agriculture, which is sponsoring this Mexican Queen Bee Project, hopes to get about 1 0,000 young queens from this initial investment by next spring. Dr. Ulf Soehngen, provincial apiarist in charge of the project, explains that Alberta sent its own queens to Mexico so that the Mexicans could produce the strain of bees that are most suitable for our climatic and environmental conditions. “The majority of the strains currently being used in Mexico,” he says, “have been selected for aggressive characteristics to discourage hive pilfering in outlying areas of the country. However, since these aggressive traits are not needed here, and since they make the bees more difficult to handle, it was decided to send our own honeybee strains to Mexico for multiplication.”
Most of the queens that have gone to Mexico were produced this year from stock that was originally selected in northern Saskatchewan. They are primarily Caucasian queens because this strain tends to be more winter-hardy than the Italian strain, which is the other main type used here. Dr. Soehngen says there is a growing trend in this province towards overwintering honeybees because of the difficulty of obtaining package bees and queens in the spring and because of their ever increasing price. The queens were sent to Mexico in cages, each cage containing one queen and half a dozen workers. Except for Miel Carlota, package bee production and queen breeding are new to most Mexican beekeepers with the result that the present project involved a considerable amount of preliminary work on the part of Alberta Agriculture personnel.
The reason the government decided to import bees from Mexico was to ensure that Alberta beekeepers will have a supply of relatively high quality queens and that the price of these queens will be lower than the price currently being charged in the United States.
The project soon failed. Not because of poor craftsmanship from Miel Carlota, but because of timing. Tracheal mites (and then varroa) were soon discovered in Mexico. African honey bees were approaching Mexico. I can’t say that this was a government boondoggle, but overseeing a bee project in Mexico during the Canadian winter at taxpayers’ expense would have been enticing. And surely Canadian scientists clever enough to know something about raising queens would have known about the potential maladies that were on their way.
Miel Carlota started with five hives June 5, 1943. In 12 years, they had perhaps 50,000. (According to R.B. Willson, 1955, Gleanings) The growth was amazing. They had huge crops, were extraordinarily progressive, and entered an area with no commercial beekeepers. In their beekeeper’s guidebook, they present a plan for other beekeepers wishing to expand. It’s almost childish in its simplicity. Start by purchasing two hives, then split them every four weeks. You can see how they got to 16,384 colonies in just one year. It’s the magic of compound interest!
What happens to famous progressive honey companies after the founders shuffle off to unknown bee pastures? Well, by the 1980s, the company began operating mostly as a packer and distributor of 
honey and various bee products. In 1989, the Mexican-based international Grupo Herdez purchased Miel Carlota and added their honey line to goodies such as canned peas, shrimp, and tomato paste. Grupo Herdez had started in 1914 but in the 1940s was selling McCormicks products, and adding other lines. Herdez acquired a series of other labels, and built Grupo Herdez into one of Mexico’s largest firms. They even spread to the USA where they own several zesty brands and Chi-Chi’s restaurants. If you’ve ever eaten MegaMex, a popular label in the states, you have purchased indirectly from Grupo Herdez and possibly eaten goods sweetened by Miel Carlota honey. Meanwhile, back in Mexico, Miel Carlota signature honey continues to make up a part of Herdez’s sales.
Bad Beekeeping Blog 
What the heck? Aren’t you going to tell us what happened to the founders and the company and the beehives and their business model?
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I’d love to tell you what happened to them. Wish I knew. I’ve searched for hours but found nothing. I read Spanish well, so I was all over the Hispanic websites, searching, but finding nothing! The tale goes cold in the mid-70s with Miel Carlota at the height of success (as a commercial beekeeper might define it). The men were in their mid-30s when they arrived in Mexico (I discovered that Dr Speck was born in 1908.) so I’d assume they were in their 70s or older when the company became more of a packing outfit than a production company. I couldn’t even find obits on either of them – maybe they are alive at age 110 or so because of all the royal jelly! Nor could I find evidence that I could trust that Miel Carlota continues today as a big honey farm. It seems that Herdez bought the entire company in 1989, so maybe they sold off the bees to other farmers in the region. This link suggests that Miel Carlota helps and supports various bee projects but doesn’t mention any hives of their own: http://www.mielcarlota.com.mx/apicultores-mexicanos/
If any dear reader knows more about the final fate of Wulfrath, Speck, and their 50,000 hives, please let us know.
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Wow! thanks for the follow-up—what a mystery! The lack of records seems really strange….we tend to assume that all is known in the age of the computer, that anything can be found out.
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Hello Ron! My grandfather used to be Miel Carlota’s manager by the time Herdez bought it. They sold everything (including bees and machinery) and now it’s only a brand name. My grandpa was fortunate enough to buy some of it and his little company has survived over 24 years so far! Still with the same work model Carlota had and in almost the exact spot.
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Thanks, Jennifer! It is nice to hear more details about the company. Miel Carlota was once the world’s largest honey farm, but when I tried to learn about, I found very little. Do have any photos or other memories of you grandfather’s ‘little company’? Is it still run by people in your family?
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Hi,
Thank you for this extraordinary work!
I´m Jesus Stephens Wulfrath 1st Great-grandson of Arthur Wulfrath Brockhoff.
Arthur Wulfrath Brockhoff (1894-1971) was born in Bomlitz Germany and die age 77 in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
He was married with Ana Crohn Boye ( Die in 1991) and they have 3 decedents…
George Wulfrath Crohn (Lost in War)
Hans Wulfrath Crohn also known as Don Juan Wulfrath (My grandfather and who managed the business after the death of his father /He die in 1987)
Mariana Wulfrath Crohn (She Die in Mexico when she was very little)
Some points in this work extraordinary work are not so precise, if you wish I can contact you with my uncle who is the official Family biographer.
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Thank you for these details. You have an amazing family. A great story could be told about the founders of Miel Carlota. Yes, please ask your uncle if he would like to share about your family. I first heard about Miel Carlota when I was young and the story has lived in me like a legend.
Ron
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Incredible. I wonder what the impact was on native Mexican bees. I’ve heard there has been a movement towards keeping native bees there as an alternative to Africanized honey bees. The native bees don’t make as much honey of course but it would be a great shame if they died out.
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Emily, you have a great point. I think that the native stingless bee (Meliponini ssp.) are largely (or exclusively) limited to the Yucatan, south into Central America, and some southwest coastal areas in Mexico. Miel Carlota operated mostly in the central area, south of Mexico City where it’s drier and Meliponini are less common. Perhaps I can get a Melipona expert to comment.
Meanwhile, your question opens up the entire issue of the invasive aspect of our honey bees in the Americas, eastern Asia, and Oceania. I settled the question in my own mind by reminding myself that in nearly all cases, there is more bee pasturage than all the imported and domestic bees can consume, that there are divisions of floral preference allowing some natives a slight advantage over immigrants, and finally, honey bee keepers are great advocates for a responsible environment (flowers, greenspaces, herbicide and insecticide restrictions) which will help all the bees.
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What did Miel Carlota produce honey from/?
Facinating. I once read an article about Miel Carlota IN south African bee Journal, but your article is much more detailed. What would be the main source of nectar in Mexico/?
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I don’t know the nectar sources for certain, but the guide book which I mentioned describes a variety of geographic zones in which Miel Carlota operated. Most of their hives were in the great central plateau. Corporate headquarters was/is just 50 kilometres south of Mexico City. In the semi-desert plateau region, wild sunflowers (acahual) and mesquite are common nectar sources. There is a lot of agriculture (soybeans, alfalfa, avocado, citrus) and some wild, introduced species such as eucalyptus.
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Very interesting post!
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My dad was a beekeeper and I was 10 years old then. (1956) we traveled as a
Family to 80 miles south of Mexico City and visited the worlds largest beekeeper
I remember seeing the multicolored hives. When they extracted they produced
10 tons of honey per hour!!! We have a few slides of the trip!!!
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That’s amazing!! It must have been a great trip for a 10-year-old, driving south of Mexico City in the 1950s!
A lot of Miel Carlota history has been lost – there is almost nothing on the internet. If you have slides from the trip, I’d love to help you get them scanned. I think readers would really enjoy seeing those pictures! – Ron
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At some point a third fellow was involved, I believe he was was a foreman and also part owner. Out of the blue one day he stopped at one of my beeyards to chat for a few minutes. This was about 15 years ago in Mission, BC. At the time I hard heard of Miel Carlota but it was interesting that one of the partners stopped in to say hello. Once a beekeeper, always a beekeeper.
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falleció el mas grande jardinero y productor de miel de esa compañia jose salvador guijosa vaca 01 de diciembre de 2018 a sus 87 años
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Falleció el gran jardinero y el productor de miel de esa compañia miel carlota aqui en el estado de morelos el SR. jose salvador guijosa vaca EL 01 de diciembre de 2018 a sus 87 años la familia esta de luto
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I am sorry to hear of the death of your grandfather, Sr Jose Salvador Guijosa, on December 1, 2018. Thankfully, he lived a long life and made a great contribution as a manager of Miel Carlota.
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Ron Miksha,
Carlelliott115@gmail.com
Have slides of the trip in 1056, only a couple of the bee operation!
It was a trip I will never forget!
Sorry I didn’t reply sooner.
Carl Elliott
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I found a wonderful vintage pottery honey pot from Miel Carlota.Thanks for all the wonderful information on the history of these beekeepers and their business in Cuernavaca.
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We are the German family of Arturo Wulfrath. May you can organanize a contact to our mexican part of family.
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Hallo Peter,
Bitte senden Sie mir eine E-Mail und ich werde versuchen, Ihnen zu helfen.
Ron Miksha
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Thank you for this excellent information about Miel Carlota. I lived in Cuernavaca and went to buy my honey and other bee products there. This was in 1988 and on so it was only one year before the place was sold to Herdez. I remember that the impression I got when I went there was that there weren’t many workers and that the place looked a bit abandoned. Still it was a huge property and I liked their products very much. I am glad I learned they were so successful in their time. Thanks
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