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Wild Jungle Honey from Borneo

      When we can get this honey from the highlands of  Borneo, it’s a party on the farm! This is probably the most luscious, sensuous and delectable honey we have ever had. Period. Made from an unknown secret recipe of rainforest nectars collected by Apis Dorsata, the largest honeybee in the world. While this bee has never been domesticated, and is rare in its native rainforest habitat, indigenous peoples in Borneo and beyond have a tradition of “honey hunting” high in the treetops. Hunters free-climb the giant trees (often 40 meters above the forest floor) and amongst a swarm of buzzing massive bees the size of green olives, they collect this divine element.

     When will you know we have it in stock?  Just keep checking back from time to time…

Sustaining the Honey Love

     While hunting for wild honey in the tree canopy is a high potential secondary forest livelihood that promises to reduce the destruction of these threatened biomes, Big Tree Farms has learned that the harvest of these rare combs must also be handled with an eye to sustainability. The bees do not produce hives but simply build a single comb on the underside of rainforest tree branches and hang and buzz there peacefully. Traditional honey hunters cut away as much of the comb as possible but this is akin to over-harvesting and reduces the health and size of the colony.

      Big Tree Farms has started an education program for wild honey collectors that teaches the mantra “Food not Brood!”…When harvesters cut more than the back 20% of a comb of Giant Bees it causes damage to the colony brood and the bees focus is distracted from honey production to rebuilding damaged brood cells. If however the harvester only takes the excess comb (back 20%), the bees quickly rebuild this excess and harvesters can return twice monthly to the same colony.