PRAGATI PRAVA, OP
Sukuna Dehury ventures into the dense Similipal forests barefoot, a ‘lungi’ tied around his waist and a turban on his head made out of his ‘gamuccha’ (a cotton towel). He dares into the wilderness with his crew members to collect nectar, travelling miles from their village in search of the hives of wild honeybees. He lights a torch to smoke the bees off the comb and as they disperse, he cuts the beehive with a machete, drops it into a container and retreats. The crew members spot and harvest at least 4-5 beehives every day.
They go out into the forest on a week-long trip and take with them rice, utensils, axes and jars. They camp at different places, cook their food and collect honey. After taking rest for a day or two, they again start their honey hunting campaign which continues from mid-April to end-June every year.
Dehury is like any other member of the Khadia community, a primitive tribal group who do not cause harm to the ecology or wild animals. However, unknowingly, their practice of honey collection causes mass death or relocation of honeybees, which poses a serious threat to ecology, said Deepak Pani, a conservationist working in the Similipal region of Mayurbhanj district. While the bee colonies are vanishing, the same are not recreated in the forests and the reason is the current practice of honey hunting.
Besides posing a direct threat to the livelihood of tribal honey gatherers, the reduction in the bee population poses a threat to global agriculture. The diminishing population of honey bees impacts ecology, the food chain and thus human survival, Pani added.
Having walked through the forests of Similipal, Pani knows the place like the back of his hand and has been working for sustainable honey collection. Most honey hunters are trained to collect honey in a sustainable way, which ensures that after a hive is harvested the honeybees return and rebuild it at the same spot. The honey hunters make a mental map and come back in a few weeks to harvest again from the same hive and the process goes on throughout the honey-hunting season.
As honeybees make their hives on the branches of tall trees or on the underside of overhangs on sheer cliffs, wild honey collectors climb trees using rope ladders made from forest vines. They make fire using wood and foliage under the trees or at the base of the rock, where they spot a hive. They know well which wood or green leaves are to be used to create the smoke which rises to disperse the bees upwards from the lower edges of their combs, leaving the brood and honey sections of the combs visible. Traditionally, the hunters cut off the whole hive while honey was stored only in a part of it.
Honey is then squeezed out from the honey combs by hands – not a hygienic practice. They generally discard the brood comb, which is the beeswax structure of cells where the queen bee lays eggs. Sometimes, they carry it to their villages to share it among community members, who consume it as a source of protein.
Pani, along with his associates, has been providing training to honey hunters to identify the brood comb in a beehive and leave it intact. The honeycomb is to be separated from the brood carefully. Conserving and protecting the brood comb is crucial for attaining sustainability in honey collection.
Pani said a brood comb is part of the beehive where a new brood is raised by the colony. A queen bee lays 1500-2000 eggs a day and in the brood comb, which is the lower part of the hive. It protects emerging bees and new queens, thereby making brood conservation an important practice to sustain bee populations. By destroying a brood, we not only kill thousands of emerging bees, but the queen too dies.
Pani added that the practice of squeezing and twisting the comb by the hands results in impurities including eggs, larvae and excessive pollen finding their way into the honey. Members of the Khadia community store honey in unhygienic and open containers. Honey that stays open for a month is exposed to humidity and dust. When it is sold, the honey is partly to fully fermented. This happens due to lack of knowledge, skill and awareness.
The community members are being trained to use a clean knife to uncap the honey cells and make clean cuts on both sides of the mid rib and place it in a fine strainer mesh net to allow honey to drain out of the comb. It is then collected and preserved in air-tight containers.
The Khadias used to discard the bee wax after extracting honey, unaware of the fact that it is of commercial importance. To extract bee wax, the combs are cut into pieces after honey is extracted from them. The pieces of comb are stirred into a vessel filled with boiling water. As they melt, the mixture is filtered into a vessel of cold water to allow it to cool so that solid wax settles on top. Bee wax is an important ingredient in the cosmetics industry.
Thanks to several years of training and practice, the tribals have been able to make their livelihood sustainable, yet they face the ire of the forest department which is denying the tribals access into the forests to collect honey or minor forest produce. Officials say they are poachers, woodcutters and, worse, Maoists. In reality, the Khadia tribesmen protect the forests and animals. It is unfortunate that the department is trying to relocate the community away from the sanctuary, said Pani who rue that such step has resulted in 79 families being relocated from Kiajhari to Khandiadhara.
According to green activist Dibakar Mohapatra, who trains tribal honey gatherers, the Khadia community learns the art of honey hunting from their fathers. Honey hunting is their way of life. They are dependent on Similipal and the ecosystem of the sanctuary, too, is dependent on them. It would be a mistake to try to change their habitat. Rather, it would be prudent of the forest department to use their knowledge and skill for protection and conservation of the sanctuary’s ecology.
Hunting wild honey in a dangerous forest is not everyone’s cup of tea. The Khadias are skilled at handling the ferocious creatures capable of killing giant animals like elephants. They have immense knowledge of the forest and its inhabitants,added Mohapatra. Honey hunters divide the forest into territories and distribute them among the different groups, while never intruding into the territory of others to collect honey or other forest produce like lacquer, kendu, jamun, and chara. Over and above their first-hand knowledge of the forest, the tribals inform the forest department of the news of deaths of wild animals and other illegal activities like felling of trees, he said.
According to Satyesh Nayak, a resident of Kundabai village, “Over the last few years, the honeybee population seems to be stable in Similipal. We never damage the forest during honey harvest. The bees are not even injured. We leave the brood comb intact and return to the spot a month later when the bees have rebuilt the honey comb.”
Satyesh, who underwent training on sustainable honey collection, said: “We revere and worship our forest and environment and do not let anybody cause harm to it. The forest department, however, say we are Maoists and poachers. It has even threatened us to leave the place where we have been staying for generations.”
