The Forgotten Pollinators by Stephen L. Buchmann & Gary Paul Nabhan

Author:Stephen L. Buchmann & Gary Paul Nabhan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781597269087
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 2012-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

All together, Pak Teh and his crew would gather nearly a thousand pounds of honey from this tree. It was but one of about ten trees they tend, trees widely scattered through the forests surrounding Pedu Lake. The Tualang honey hunting allows each man in the Dayang crew to make as much as $150 more per month than he would make as a rubber tapper or farm laborer. Today the hunters must obtain permits to harvest the honey trees from the Sultan of Kedah province, for competition has become as fierce as the bees themselves—there are now more than 70 crews of tualang honey hunters who compete annually for the few giant honey trees found in their region. Collectively, they have harvested as much as 150,000 pounds of honey in a single two or three month season. That yield may decline, however, as deforestation further impinges on their activities and, of course, the lives of the giant bees in their rainforest home.

Professor Mardan is outspoken about how logging in the nearby forests is now disrupting this ancient tradition: “To many honey gatherers, as long as there are bees and the forest, there will always be honey gathering. But now the biggest threat to the profession of honey gathering seems to be the depletion of floral resources in the tropical rainforest brought about by indiscriminate logging. Many professional honey gatherers feel strongly that bee trees—which make good timber—should be protected from loggers. Urgent attention should be paid to their opinions.”

Some foresters do, in fact, concede that the giant tualangs may be among the tallest trees left on the face of the earth, reaching heights of 150 feet or greater. These trees hold the vestiges of one of the oldest relationships between bees, floral resources, and their human stewards. They also offer honey hunters a way to supplement their meager incomes in a sustainable way without depleting the forest—and without disturbing the giant bees to the extent that they abandon the trees forever. Pak Teh himself has watched bees return to the same tree he has worked every year since the mid-1960s. The ancient prayers are still offered—and he still uses a cow scapula instead of a metal knife and a wooden ladder instead of an aluminum one—in order to honor Hitam Manis, the dark sweet goddess for whom he and his family are handmaidens.

Far away across the Eurasian continent, in eastern Spain, ancient petroglyphs on a rock shelter wall depict an activity similar to the one witnessed near Pedu Lake. At Barranc Fondo near Castellon, your eyes climb the sheer rock wall where five human figures ascend a ladder toward a nest, while families wait below, eager for a taste of honey. The ladder reaches to a nest surrounded by bees, a nest high up in a tree. Spirits of grazing animals and other creatures, branched plants, and rounded cobbles—bats, birds, or more bees—float around the crown of the tree. The petroglyphs of wild honeybees at Barranc Fondo are estimated to be at least 6,000 years old.

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