Traditions by type of practice
The first cut, because it separates a tradition from a technique. Yao honey hunting is a practice a named community carries out in a named place; smoke is something almost everybody who has ever opened a nest has used.
Honey hunting12
Taking honey from wild colonies nobody sited or manages. A named tradition, practised by identifiable people in an identifiable place.
Harvesting method8
A technique rather than a tradition — smoke, night working, selective comb cutting — recurring across many unrelated cultures because the problem is the same everywhere.
Hive system14
The container. Log, bark, clay, basket, wall cavity or box, and each one is a solution to a climate, a bee and an economy rather than a step on a ladder.
Beekeeping tradition19
A whole way of keeping bees in one place: the hive, the siting, the calendar, the ownership and who does the work.
Stingless-bee keeping10
Meliponiculture and wild meliponine harvesting. A different bee, a different hive, a different honey and a different set of uses.
Cultural use35
What honey, wax or brood is for beyond food — payment, offering, medicine, hospitality, craft.
Ritual and ceremony9
Observances attached to the bees or to the harvest. Recorded as documented practice with a date and a source, never as a general spiritual claim.
Why some groups are missing
A value appears here only once at least 4 practices sit behind it. The vocabulary has more values than this page shows, and the missing ones are gaps in the catalogue rather than in the world — several of them are subjects this site intends to cover and has not yet.