A Taste of Honey

What satisfied people’s craving for sweet before sugar came along? Well, some people boiled the sap of maple and date to make syrup, but honey was the undisputed king of sweet. Honey bees were domesticated in ancient Egypt where beekeepers used clay jars for their bees to nest in. Beekeeping was also well known in Greek and Roman civilizations.

While it was once reserved for royalty and aristocracy, today’s honey is a commodity. Of the thousands of species of bees in the world, there are exactly seven species of honey bees, and of these, at most three are responsible for our honey supply. Honey bees belong to the genus Apis. The most prolific species for honey production is Apis mellifera, used in many countries including Bangladesh. Another species, Apis cerena, is also used in some places.

Bees make honey by collecting nectar and pollen from flower (and sometimes from leaves.) They have a well-developed social structure and work together as a colony to produce their food. For example, a scout bee searches far and wide for good flowers full of nectar. When it finds the flowers, it returns to its nest and communicates the location to other bees so they can all collect the nectar.

But how does it transmit this information? It dances! Performed in a figure 8, this dance is called the Waggle Dance. Through the movements of the dance, it communicates the distance and the direction (polar coordinates to us engineer types.) The scientist who figured this out, Karl von Frisch, won the Nobel Prize for his work.

Another example of bee coordination: worker bees use their wings like fans to blow air on the honey in order to evaporate water from it (to thicken it.)

Most honey today is produced by domesticated bees. This process has evolved over the centuries. The modern bee hive was invented by the American Lorenzo Langstroth. It affords the bee-keeper visibility inside the hive to ensure bee health and honey production. Honey is easily collected by removing the frames from the box.

The domesticated bee, however, is not our only source of honey. From Sundarban, Bangladesh collects one to two hundred metric tons of honey every year. This honey is made by the migrant bee Apis dorsata, or the Giant Honey Bee. A wild bee that can never be domesticated, it is more productive and more ferocious than Apis mellifera. Migrating to Sundarban in late winter, it gets busy making honey.

On April 1 every year, Bangladesh government opens Sundarban’s honey hunting season. Several thousand Mouals (honey hunters) receive permits to look for Giant Honey Bee colonies inside the forest. Along the way they face risks and hardships from tigers, robbers, uninviting terrain and the weather. They harvest the honey by taking parts of each nest and carefully leaving enough for regeneration. The best Sundarban honey comes from flowers of the Khulshi plant. Other flowers such as Gewa, Keora, Goran and Possur also contribute.

It is possible to accompany the Mouals in this adventure through tours companies such as Guide Tours and Bengal Tours. I went on this tour some years ago and can attest to its excitement. A special bonus is being able to taste freshly broken wild honey. If you are used to the taste of store-bought honey, you are in for a sweet surprise!

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