Honey Hunting

What actually happens

Twice a year, in a handful of Gurung and Magar villages in the Annapurna foothills, teams of hunters descend cliff faces on ladders woven from bamboo and hemp to cut honeycomb from colonies of Apis laboriosa, the Himalayan giant honeybee — the largest honeybee in the world, with combs that can be over a metre across.

The ladder is anchored at the top and hangs free. A hunter works from it with a long bamboo pole, cutting comb into a basket lowered on a second rope, while smoke from a fire lit at the base of the cliff drives the bees off. The bees are not docile and the smoke is only partly effective. Hunters are stung repeatedly during a harvest and accept it as part of the work.

There is no safety equipment in the sense a visitor would recognise. This is a genuinely dangerous occupation that people do because it has value, not for an audience.

Mad honey

The spring harvest at higher altitude produces the honey Nepal is known for internationally. Bees foraging on rhododendron concentrate grayanotoxins from the nectar into the honey, which in sufficient quantity produces dizziness, nausea, hallucination and, at higher doses, a drop in heart rate and blood pressure that is medically serious.

It is used locally in small amounts as a traditional medicine. It is also, increasingly, sold to visitors as a novelty — and it is worth being plain that people have been hospitalised, including tourists who took a spoonful expecting an anecdote. If you buy it, treat the local guidance on quantity as the instruction it is.

The autumn harvest at lower altitude is ordinary honey and carries none of this.

Season

Harvests are twice yearly and the dates move with the bees and the weather, which is why this cannot be booked like a scheduled activity.

Spring, roughly April to May — the high-cliff harvest, and the one that yields rhododendron honey.

Autumn, roughly October to November — lower cliffs, larger yield, ordinary honey.

The villages that still practise it are chiefly in the Lamjung, Kaski and Gorkha districts, reached on foot from roadheads a few hours from Pokhara. Getting there is a short trek in itself.

How we run this, and what we will not do

Honey hunting has become a photographic set-piece, and some operators pay villages to stage a harvest outside the season for a group with cameras. We do not arrange that, and we would rather tell you the harvest is six weeks away than sell you a performance of it.

When a genuine harvest is happening we arrange to visit it, which means flexible dates and a willingness to walk in at short notice.

The honey itself is a significant income source for these communities. Buying directly from the village is worth doing; buying "mad honey" in a Thamel shop is buying something of unknown origin.

What you should expect

A day or two of walking, basic village accommodation, and a long wait while the team prepares. The harvest itself may take several hours and you will watch from a distance the hunters judge safe. Bees will be in the air around you and some people get stung.