On a moonless night deep in the Malaysian rainforest, two men perched precariously on high branches use a smoking torch to draw thousands of bees from a treetop hive, braving the angry swarm to collect their prized honey.
The honey hunters, as they are known, are rag-tag groups of villagers who head to remote corners of the jungle every year in search of the rare nectar, hidden in towering tualang trees.
“This is the real thing,” said Abdul Samad Ahmad, 60, who has been harvesting honey in this way for more than 20 years. “There’s a lot of nutrition in this honey. You can make it into medicine, for your cough or cold.”
Photo: AFP
Like New Zealand’s manuka honey, also hailed for its supposed medicinal qualities, Malaysian tualang honey is expensive, fetching 150 ringgit (US$38) per kilogram — a huge amount for people from poor, rural communities.
However, the generations-old practice faces myriad threats, from environmental destruction and falling bee numbers to a lack of interest among the young.
The die-hard hunters remain optimistic — for them, there is no greater buzz than climbing trees 75m tall to gather honey made by bees gorged on sweet nectar from exotic jungle flowers.
The honey-collecting season in northern Malaysia’s Greater Ulu Muda forest runs from February to April, when giant honey bees arrive from other parts of Asia to make their hives in the trees that stretch high above the rainforest canopy.
On a recent trip, Abdul Samad and six others traveled far into the forest, boarding two small boats and sailing across a lake to reach a tualang. They nailed branches up its trunk a few feet apart to create a makeshift ladder, replacing old ones from the previous year.
As night fell, after layering up and donning thick jackets, the group lit vine roots twisted together to create a smoking torch.
They clambered up the tree, hitting the torch against the trunk as they approached a hive. A flood of embers showered below and a team member called out to the bees: “Come down, black sweet, come down.”
A swarm of bees rushed out, chasing the sparks of light — granting the hunters precious moments to cut through the hive and fill a bucket with chunks of honeycomb.
The men worked through the night, slowly moving around the tree’s many hives and only stopping just before dawn, having collected 43kg of honey.
The hunters were stung numerous times, but continued working, saying they are used to the pain.
One of the group, Zaini Abdul Hamid, said he and his fellow hunters are not aware of any deaths resulting from the risky pastime, “but if you’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time, the bees will sting you until your body is swollen.”
Demand for tualang honey exceeds its limited supply and the bounty is split equally among the group, who sell it in their village or to dealers from out of town.
None of those on the recent expedition were younger than 45, with some in their 60s, and they said younger people from their villages have no interest in taking up honey-hunting.
“They’re not brave,” said Mohamad Khairi Mohamad Arshad, while Zaini lamented that the younger generation “prefer to play with their gadgets — we asked them to come, but they’re not interested.”
The hunters said it was common to see four to five groups from a single village harvesting from tualang trees in the 1960s, but these days there are far fewer.
The number of bees in the Ulu Muda forest also appears to have fallen in recent years, with heavy logging regularly reported and some blaming the destruction of their natural habitat.
No comprehensive studies have been done on bee populations in Ulu Muda, but Makhdzir Mardan, a bee expert from Universiti Putra Malaysia, said that on an expedition into the forest in 1983 he had spotted 128 hives on a tree, while now you could expect to find 40 at most.
As they trekked deeper into the jungle, the honey hunters mourned the loss of the bees’ habitat, particularly the flowers they feed on.
“The places where the bees look for food are disappearing,” said Mohamad Khairi Mohamad Arshad, 50. “If there aren’t a lot of flowers, then the bees will not come.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion