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Honey hunting orhoney harvesting is the gathering ofhoney from wildbee colonies. It is one of the most ancient human activities and is still practiced by aboriginal societies in parts ofAfrica,Asia,Australia andSouth America. Some of the earliest evidence of gathering honey from wild colonies is fromrock painting, dating to around 8,000 BC. In theMiddle Ages in Europe, the gathering of honey from wild or semi-wild bee colonies was carried out on a commercial scale.
Gathering honey from wild bee colonies is usually done by subduing the bees withsmoke and breaking open the tree or rocks where the colony is located, often resulting in the physical destruction of the colony.
Honey hunting inAfrica is a part of the indigenous cultures in many parts and hunters have hunted for thousands of years. AHoneyguide bird may lead humans to bee colonies.
A documentary by freelance photo journalists Diane Summers andEric Valli on theHoney hunters of Nepal[1] documentsGurung tribesmen of west-centralNepal entering the jungle in search ofwild honey where they use indigenous tools under precarious conditions to collect honey.
Twice a year high in the Himalayan foothills of central Nepal teams of men gather around cliffs that are home to the world's largest honeybee,Apis laboriosa. As they have for generations, the men come to harvest the Himalayan cliff bee's honey.
This was also documented in aBBC2 documentary in August 2008 entitledJimmy and the Wild Honey Hunters-Sun. An English farmer travelled into theHimalayan foothills on a honey hunting expedition. The world's largest honeybee,A. laboriosa is over twice the size of those in theUK where their larger bodies have adapted to the colder climate for insulation. The documentary involved ascending a 200-foot rope ladder and balancing a basket and a long pole to chisel away at a giant honey comb of up to 2 million bees and catch it in the basket.
For centuries the Gurung people of the country of Nepal risked their lives to collect wild cliff-honey. Photos of Andrew Newey capture this dying tradition.[2]
In theSunderban forest, shared byBangladesh and India'sWest Bengal,estuarine forests are the area of operation of honey hunters.[3] They are known as "Mawals". This is a dangerous occupation as many honeyhunters die in tiger attacks which are common in this area. The harvest ritual, which varies slightly from community to community, begins with a prayer and sacrifice of flowers, fruits, and rice. Then a fire is lit at the base of the cliff to smoke the bees from their honeycombs.
The traditional method of harvesting honey inRiau Province is called Menumbai. This skill is performed by Petalangan people who live in the Sialang tree in the Tanah Ulayat forest area, Pelalawan. Menumbai Pelalawan is a way of taking honey from a beehive using a bucket and rope. To prevent the bees from stinging the body, the taking of the honey is accompanied by the recitation of mantras and rhymes. Menumbai Pelalawan is only done in wild bee hives and only in the afternoon.
As early as theStone Age, people collected the honey of wild bees, but this was not done commercially. From theEarly Middle Ages it became a trade, known in German-speaking central Europe, for example, as aZeidler orZeitler, whose job it was to collect the honey of wild, semi-wild or domestic bees in the forests. Unlike modernbeekeepers, they did not keep the bees in man-made woodenbeehives. Instead, they cut holes as hives in old trees at a height of about six meters and fitted a board over the entrance. Whether a colony of bees nested there or not depended entirely on the natural environment and that could change every year. The tree tops were also cut off in order to prevent wind damage.
Extremely valuable, if not a prerequisite for tree beekeeping, wereconifer stands. Important locations for honey hunting in the Middle Ages were in the regions of theFichtel Mountains and theNuremberg Imperial Forest. InBavaria forest beekeeping is recorded as early as the year 959 in the vicinity ofGrabenstätt. But even in the area of today'sBerlin, there was extensive honey gathering, especially in the then much largerGrunewald.
In the area aroundNuremberg there are still numerous references to an earlier flourishing honey hunting tradition such as the castle ofZeidlerschloss inFeucht. Honey was important for Nuremberg'sgingerbread production; the NurembergReichswald ("The bee garden of theHoly Roman Empire") provided plenty of it.
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