Tualang tree honey harvesting
Climbing emergent rainforest trees at night to take giant honey bee combs, in peninsular Malaysia and adjacent forests. The climb is the whole difficulty: colonies cluster in the crown of a tree that may be seventy metres tall.
Current status
Practised, declining
Still practised and measurably contracting — fewer practitioners, less territory, or a shorter season than the earlier record describes.
Practised and contracting with lowland forest loss and the removal of emergent trees. Reported in recent forest-livelihood and research literature.
Why the tualang
Koompassia excelsa — the tualang — is one of the tallest tropical trees, with a smooth trunk and a crown emerging above the canopy. Apis dorsata colonies favour its high horizontal branches and cluster on them, sometimes in large numbers on a single tree. The result is a concentration of honey in one place, forty metres or more above the ground, on a trunk nothing can grip.
Access is by peg ladder: hardwood pegs driven into the trunk in a spiral as the climber ascends, tied to a pole or vine rail. It is built on the way up and left, sometimes maintained between seasons.
The night climb
The harvest is worked at night. A burning torch is carried or lowered, and embers falling through the darkness draw bees away from the comb — the bees follow the light rather than the climber. Comb is cut and lowered in a bucket on a rope. Chanting and addressing the bees is documented as part of the practice in several accounts.
The team and the division
A harvest involves a climber and a ground party managing ropes, buckets and the torch, and the yield is divided among them. Accounts describe a leader who knows the trees and the timing, which is knowledge held by individuals rather than written down.
Multiple colonies on one tree mean a single climb can be repeated across a night, which is why an occupied tualang is a substantial asset and why individual trees are known and named.
Cultural significance
Addressing the bees and chanting during the climb are documented in several accounts, and function as part of the working method rather than as decoration.
Pressures and conservation
The practice depends on individual emergent trees surviving logging. Honey harvesting has been used as an argument for protecting them, which makes it one of the few cases where a harvesting tradition is a conservation instrument.
What this page does not claim
That the tualang is the only tree used or that the practice is uniform across the region. Other emergent species carry Apis dorsata, and the peg-ladder technique is far more widespread than any one tree.
In short
- Apis dorsata clusters on the high branches of emergent tualang trees.
- Peg ladders are built into the trunk on the way up.
- Torches at night draw the bees to the light rather than to the climber.
Sources
- Asian Honey Bees: Biology, Conservation, and Human Interactions — Harvard University Press (2006) · Monograph
- Bees and their role in forest livelihoods — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2009) · Industry body
- The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting — Routledge (1999) · Historical text
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.