From Hive to Jar: Modern Honey Harvesting in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh

-Abu Taher Prince

A deep exploration of how the world’s most extraordinary wild honey is found, harvested, processed, and brought to market — and how centuries of traditional craft are meeting the demands of a modern, global economy

A Forest Full of Gold

Somewhere in the Pairatuni Canal area of the Sundarbans, a cluster of honeybees the size of a man’s thumbnail is completing a journey of extraordinary complexity. Over the preceding weeks, tens of thousands of Apis dorsata — the giant honeybee, the largest honeybee species on earth — have fanned out across the flowering canopy of the Sundarbans mangrove forest, visiting the pale blossoms of the khalisa tree (Aegiceras corniculatum), the small white flowers of the goran (Ceriops decandra), and the delicate blooms of the pashur, the bain, and the keora. Each bee has visited perhaps eighty flowers to collect a single drop of nectar. Now, that nectar — concentrated, enzymatically transformed, and sealed beneath a cap of wax inside a comb that hangs from a mangrove branch like a golden shield — is honey.

It is the finest wild honey produced anywhere on the planet. Scientists have measured its antioxidant compounds, its antibacterial properties, and its unique combination of floral nectars that no cultivated hive could replicate. Consumers in Dhaka, Tokyo, and increasingly London and New York pay premium prices for a jar of it. And yet, from the moment this honey was made inside the forest to the moment it reaches a kitchen table halfway around the world, it must pass through one of the most complicated, dangerous, and economically inequitable supply chains in global food production.

This is the story of that journey — the bees, the collectors, the methods, the processing, the markets, and the modernisation that is slowly, imperfectly, and urgently changing all of it.

The Bees of the Sundarbans

Apis Dorsata — The Giant Honeybee

The foundation of the entire Sundarbans honey economy is a single bee species: Apis dorsata, known in Bengali as chak moumachhi (hive honeybee) and in English as the giant honeybee or rock bee. Understanding this bee — its biology, its behaviour, its extraordinary productivity, and its limitations as a subject of domestication — is essential for understanding why honey harvesting in the Sundarbans takes the specific forms it does and why those forms are so difficult to modernise.

Apis dorsata is the largest honeybee in the world. A single worker bee can measure 17 to 20 millimetres in length — roughly twice the size of a European honeybee (Apis mellifera). The colonies they form are correspondingly enormous: a single colony can contain 60,000 to 80,000 individual bees and, at peak production, store 40 to 60 kilograms of honey in a single comb. That single comb — a flat, open structure that can measure up to four feet wide, exposed to the open air rather than enclosed in a hive box — represents all the colony’s honey storage. There is no redundancy, no secondary storage, no division of the comb into multiple sections. The entire season’s production hangs in one spectacular, buzzing sheet.

Apis dorsata is not a bee that tolerates domestication. Extensive attempts to keep them in managed hives have consistently failed — the bees abandon any enclosure they are placed in, returning to their preference for building open combs on the branches and trunks of trees, on cliff faces, or occasionally on the undersides of bridges and overhangs. This is a fundamental constraint on the modernisation of Sundarbans honey production: the bees that produce the honey cannot be managed, moved, or multiplied by human intervention in the way that domesticated Apis mellifera or Apis cerana colonies can be. Each season, the models must go to where the bees have chosen to build, not to where it would be convenient for humans to have them.

Three bee species are documented in the Sundarbans, but Apis dorsata dominates honey production. According to experienced forest-dependent people, the honey from Apis dorsata hives is the best honey of the Sundarbans — reddish in colour, intensely sweet, and locally referred to as padma modhu (lotus honey) when harvested from hives where the bees have been foraging on specific flowers. The other species present — smaller bees that build enclosed, multi-comb hives in tree hollows — produce honey in quantities too small to be economically significant for collection.

The Nectar Sources: The Flowers That Make the Honey

The character of Sundarbans honey — its colour, flavour, aroma, and chemical composition — is determined by the specific combination of mangrove and riparian plant species whose flowers the bees visit in any given season. The Sundarbans is home to a diverse array of flowering trees, and the honey produced from different floral sources has measurably different qualities.

The most prized nectar source is the khalisa (Aegiceras corniculatum), also spelt kholisha or khulshi. Khalisa is a mangrove plant that reaches five to seven feet in height at maturity. It does not grow everywhere in the forest — its distribution is patchy, and the areas where it grows in density are the areas that produce the best honey. When Khalisa’s flowers bloom, swarms of bees converge on them in extraordinary numbers. The honey produced from khalisa nectar, harvested in early May, is bright golden in colour, highly aromatic, and commands the highest price of any Sundarbans honey variety. Honey harvested from khalisa later in June and July runs slightly darker and is considered slightly less premium, though still exceptional.

The goran (Ceriops decandra) is another major nectar source, producing honey with slightly different characteristics — darker in tone, with a more complex, slightly resinous flavour. The keora (Sonneratia apetala), the bain, and the pashur (Xylocarpus granatum) also contribute to the nectar pool during the season. The hargoja tree’s flowers are among the first to bloom each spring, signalling the approach of the season to both bees and collectors. Research documents that bees producing Sundarbans honey may draw nectar from up to twenty different plant species across a single season, giving the honey a multi-floral complexity impossible to reproduce in managed apiaries outside the forest.

The Annual Migration of the Bees

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Sundarbans honey ecosystem is that the bees themselves are seasonal migrants. Apis dorsata colonies do not remain in the Sundarbans year-round. Each year, rock bees arrive in the Sundarbans in the month of Magh (January–February in the Bengali calendar), spend their honey cycle in the mangrove forest through the peak flowering season, and then depart in the month of Ashar (roughly June–July). Where exactly they go, and where they overwinter, is still a subject of scientific inquiry — but the annual arrival of vast numbers of wild bee colonies to build their combs in the Sundarbans’ flowering trees is one of the great ecological spectacles of the mangrove world.

This migratory pattern means that the forest effectively receives a seasonal gift of pollination and honey production that it did not have to cultivate. The bees arrive, do their work in the flowers, produce their honey, and — if the models are skilled and sustainable in their harvesting — leave behind enough of the colony to continue and eventually migrate away. The challenge of sustainable harvesting is essentially about respecting this cycle: taking enough honey to make the trip economically viable without destroying the colony’s ability to survive and reproduce.

The Permit System and the Structure of the Season

Entering the Forest: Legal Framework

Before a single poacher sets foot in the Sundarbans with a smoke torch, the entire harvest season is shaped by a regulatory framework administered by the Bangladesh Forest Department. The formal honey collection season opens annually on April 1 and runs through June 30. During this three-month window, the Forest Department issues a limited number of permits — called BLC passes (Boat Licence Certificate passes) — that authorise groups of collectors to enter specific areas of the forest.

Each permit is issued in the name of the sajuni, the head of a boat crew, and specifies the area of the forest where the group is authorised to collect. The permit system was designed to regulate the volume of human entry into the forest, limit extraction to sustainable levels, and ensure that every person inside the forest is documented and accountable. In practice, the system is an imperfect approximation of these goals, but it provides the legal and logistical scaffolding within which legitimate honey collection operates.

During the 2024–25 fiscal year, 2,858 manuals entered the Sundarbans under 437 permits across the Khulna and Satkhira ranges of the Forest Department. The Forest Department has set production targets for each season — in 2026, for instance, a target of 1,100 quintals of honey and 600 quintals of beeswax was established. Every year, approximately 2,000 honey collectors extract about 2,700 quintals of honey and about 600 quintals of beeswax from the Sundarbans in total, making it the source of a major share of Bangladesh’s natural honey production.

Before the formal season opens, local leaders, honey experts, and government officials typically hold an inauguration ceremony in villages like Burigoalini, where matters relating to sustainable honey collection and forest conservation are addressed. Permits are distributed. Prayers are offered. And then the boats move toward the treeline.

Preparing for the Expedition

The preparation for a Sundarbans honey expedition is a significant undertaking that begins weeks before the boats depart. The first step is assembling a team — the standard group size ranges from seven to twelve collectors, a number large enough to provide safety in numbers and adequate labour for the harvest, but small enough to be manageable on a single boat.

Having assembled the team, the next challenge is financing. The equipment and provisions required for a month-long expedition into the Sundarbans represent an investment that most rural families cannot cover from savings. The first step is to prepare a team and then take loans at a certain interest rate from local money-lenders – called ‘mohajon’ – and rent boats for one month with that money. Renting a suitable boat for the expedition costs approximately one lakh taka (about USD 900 at current rates). This is a substantial sum for families whose annual income may not exceed twice this amount.

With financing secured, the team assembles its equipment. The essential items for a traditional honey collection expedition include:

The boat: The central platform of the entire operation, serving as home, workshop, transport, and refuge for the duration of the expedition. Traditional mouldal boats are wooden, relatively flat-bottomed for navigating shallow channels, and large enough to accommodate a team and their harvest. At night, the boat is anchored in the river as far from the forest as possible, since tigers are strong swimmers and have been known to approach boats at night.

Smoke materials: The fundamental tool of bee management in the Sundarbans is smoke. Mouals prepare bundles of dried leaves – traditionally hental (date palm, Phoenix paludosa) leaves, golpata (Nipa fruticans) leaves, or other locally available materials – which are tied together into bunches called karu. When lit, these bundles produce thick, cool smoke that confuses and calms the bees, reducing their defensive stinging response long enough for the collector to access and cut the comb. The specific choice of smoking material is a matter of traditional knowledge — different leaves produce different qualities of smoke, and experienced smokers have strong preferences based on decades of practice.

Cutting tools: Long-bladed knives and machetes for cutting the honeycomb from its attachment points on the tree or branch. The comb must be cut cleanly and quickly to minimise disturbance to any bees that remain on it.

Collection containers: Large clay pots, wooden barrels, or — increasingly — food-grade plastic containers for storing the harvested honey during transport back to the boat.

Protective coverings: Traditional protection is minimal by modern beekeeping standards. Mouals typically cover their faces with gamcha (thick cotton towels) and wear long-sleeved clothing, but few use anything resembling the full protective suits worn by modern commercial beekeepers. The gamcha is practical and well-adapted to the hot, humid forest environment, but it provides limited protection against the mass stinging response that a disturbed Apis dorsata colony is capable of. Experienced smokers rely more on their skill with smoke and their intimate knowledge of bee behaviour than on physical protection.

Food and supplies: The expedition lasts three to four weeks. All food, water, and cooking equipment must be brought, since the remote areas of the Sundarbans offer no resupply options.

Finding the Hives — Navigation and Traditional Knowledge

The Art of Hive Location

The single most important skill a beekeeper possesses — and the one most resistant to technological substitution — is the ability to find hives. In 6,000 square kilometres of dense mangrove forest, threaded with hundreds of rivers and canals and covered in a continuous canopy of trees, locating the enormous but well-camouflaged combs of Apis dorsata requires a combination of ecological knowledge, pattern recognition, and accumulated experience that cannot be codified in a manual or learnt in a classroom.

After anchoring the boats at a suitable place, the collectors enter the jungle, divided into several groups. Every few moments, they signal to each other by making a sound — ku ku — to let everyone know their location. Everybody searches for beehives. The signal system serves both a safety function (preventing individuals from becoming isolated in tiger territory) and a practical coordination function (allowing the group to converge quickly when a hive is found).

Experimenters look for several indicators of bee presence. The most direct sign is visible flight activity — streams of bees flying to and from a specific point in the canopy. Experienced collectors can read the angle and intensity of bee flight lines to estimate the direction and distance of a hive. Secondary indicators include the distinctive sound of a large Apis dorsata colony — a low, steady roar audible at some distance in quiet forest conditions — and the presence of beeswax residue on tree bark, indicating previous hive sites that the bees may have returned to.

The seasonal pattern of flowering is also a key navigational guide. Since the bees follow the nectar, the moles follow the flowers. Knowledge of which tree species are in bloom in which parts of the forest at which point in the season – accumulated over a lifetime and passed from father to son – allows experienced collectors to predict where bees are most likely to be building their hives at any given time. This traditional ecological knowledge is, in a very real sense, the intellectual capital of the Mual profession.

Reading the Forest: Traditional Ecological Knowledge

The traditional knowledge systems of the Sundarbans mouals represent millennia of accumulated observation, encoded in practices, prohibitions, and rules of thumb that are transmitted orally within families and communities. This knowledge encompasses far more than hive location. It includes:

Hive assessment: Experienced beekeepers can estimate the size and productivity of a hive from external observation — the thickness of the comb, the density of bee activity, the colour of the wax cap — before committing to the labour of smoke preparation and cutting. A small or poorly developed hive may not justify the effort and the disturbance to the colony.

Sustainable harvesting norms: Traditional practice includes norms about how much of a hive to cut and how much to leave. The conventional approach involves cutting only the honey-bearing sections of the comb while leaving the brood sections (containing eggs, larvae, and pupae) intact. This allows the colony to survive and rebuild, rather than destroying the entire colony and its future honey production. The instruction that morals cut the hive carefully, ensuring that the queen bee and larvae remain unharmed, is a traditional sustainability practice that has been partly formalised into Forest Department guidelines.

Seasonal knowledge: The mouals know the Sundarbans calendar intimately — when different tree species begin flowering, how the tidal patterns affect access to different areas, when the bees are most productive versus most aggressive, and which areas of the forest are most bee-dense at which point in the season.

Water and weather reading: Navigation through the Sundarbans’ hundreds of canals and channels requires an intimate knowledge of tidal patterns, current directions, and seasonal weather. Minals read tidal tables, sky conditions, and water colour to navigate safely and efficiently. Honey collectors enter the forest when the sky is clear and the river is at low tide, since low water makes the forest floor more accessible and the tidal channels easier to navigate.

The Harvest — Step by Step

Approaching the Hive

When a hive is located, the approach is methodical and deliberate. Speed is counterproductive — sudden movements and noise agitate Apis dorsata colonies, which are significantly more aggressive than domesticated bee species and capable of delivering a mass stinging attack that has been known to cause human fatalities. The moles move slowly, speak quietly if at all, and prepare their smoke equipment before coming within sight distance of the hive.

One person typically remains with the boat, rowing it slowly along the bank to keep pace with the team moving through the forest. This anchorperson serves a critical safety function: they maintain the team’s link to escape and transport and can move quickly to assist if something goes wrong — whether a bee attack, a tiger encounter, or an injury.

Preparing and Using Smoke

The preparation of the smoke bundle is a skilled operation. The karu — the tied bundle of green henta, golpata, or other leaves — must be dense enough to produce sustained, cool smoke when lit but not so tightly packed that it fails to catch or burns too hot. The smoke from green, still-living leaves is preferred over dry leaves precisely because it burns cooler and produces more voluminous, diffuse smoke, which is more effective at calming the bees without burning them.

When lit, the torch is positioned upwind of the hive so that the smoke flows naturally across it. The mortal waits — patience is a key virtue here — for the smoke to take effect. Over a period of several minutes, the bees on the surface of the comb begin to move away from the smoke, retreating deeper into the comb or taking flight in a disoriented mass. The smoke interferes with the bees’ alarm pheromone communication, preventing the colony’s defensive response from fully mobilising. Like a charm, the bees fly away from the smoke in one cloud.

This is the window of opportunity. It is not unlimited — the bees will return as the smoke dissipates, and a manual worker who works too slowly will face the colony’s full defensive response. Speed and confidence in cutting are essential once the smoke has taken effect.

Cutting the Comb

With the bees partially cleared, one mortal — typically the most experienced member of the group — approaches the hive, often by climbing the tree to which it is attached. Since mangrove forest trees don’t grow as tall as those in other forest types, honeybees in the Sundarbans usually build their large, single-comb nests relatively low to the ground, within reach of the honey hunters — though they are frequently still elevated above ground level, requiring climbing.

The cutter works quickly and precisely. The goal is to remove the honey-rich portions of the comb — typically the upper sections, where capped honey is stored — while leaving the lower brood sections (where eggs and larvae are developing) intact. Cutting is done with a sharp, long-bladed knife or machete. The cut sections of honeycomb fall or are caught and are immediately carried away from the hive site to prevent the bees from following the honey.

Once some honey is gathered, it is deposited in the boat. The team may repeat this process at several hive sites in a single day, going from island to island around the mangrove, locating hives, smoking, cutting, and carrying back to the boat. A typical expedition visits four or more cuttings per day when hives are plentiful, with the team leaving the boat, retracing their steps through difficult terrain, and returning each time with sections of honeycomb.

On the Boat: Initial Processing

The honeycombs brought back to the boat represent a mixture of honey and beeswax — two valuable products that must be separated. The initial processing on the boat is rough and practical: the combs are squeezed by hand to extract the liquid honey, which is then strained through a coarse cloth filter to remove the larger pieces of wax, dead bees, and forest debris that accumulate during the cutting process.

After manually squeezing the honey out of the honeycombs, normal cotton cloth is used to remove hive debris while retaining the natural properties of the honey. The resulting liquid is transferred to storage containers — traditionally, clay pots sealed with cloth or wax, increasingly replaced by food-grade plastic drums. The beeswax residue remaining after squeezing is collected separately; beeswax has its own market, selling alongside honey as a valuable forest product.

This initial on-boat processing is where a significant quality challenge originates. The honey extracted by hand-squeezing and cloth-straining in the field retains a high moisture content — often exceeding 25 per cent by weight. Honey with a moisture content above approximately 19 to 20 per cent is susceptible to fermentation: yeasts naturally present in the honey or introduced during processing begin converting the sugars to alcohol, producing a product that quickly becomes unpalatable and unsellable. The high humidity of the Sundarbans environment and the absence of any dehumidification equipment on the boats mean that moisture control at this initial stage is extremely difficult.

The Seasonal Yield

Each male, on a typical expedition of three to four weeks, gathers roughly 400 kilograms of honey per season. This figure varies significantly based on hive density in the areas accessed, the weather conditions (which affect bee activity and flowering intensity), and the experience and work ethic of the team. In good years — when the forest flowering is abundant, and hive density is high — a skilled team can significantly exceed this figure.

Historically, the Sundarbans honey harvest has fluctuated considerably from year to year, responding to ecological conditions in the forest. Forest Department data shows 71,811 kilograms of honey produced in 2015–16, growing dramatically to 444,800 kilograms in 2019–20 (a year when reduced human movement in the forest due to COVID-19 allowed the bee population to thrive undisturbed), then settling to 318,038 kilograms in 2023–24 and 207,150 kilograms in 2024–25.

Total Sundarbans honey production across Bangladesh has been estimated at 200 to 300 metric tonnes annually, with Bangladesh producing 230 metric tonnes in 2022 and 300 metric tonnes in 2023 — more than three times the 137 metric tonnes collected from the Indian side of the Sundarbans over seven years.

Post-Harvest — Processing and Quality

The Quality Challenge

The honey that arrives at village markets and processing facilities directly from manual expeditions bears only a partial resemblance to the premium product that Sundarbans honey can and should be. The gap between the potential quality of this extraordinary product and the actual quality of much that reaches the market is the central challenge facing modernisation efforts in the sector.

Several quality issues affect raw Sundarbans honey as traditionally harvested and processed:

High moisture content: As noted, the absence of controlled processing conditions means moisture content frequently exceeds 25 per cent. High-moisture honey ferments rapidly, reducing shelf life and making it unsuitable for export markets, which typically require moisture content below 20 per cent (EU standards require below 20 per cent; premium markets prefer below 18 per cent).

Physical impurities: Field straining through cotton cloth removes large debris but leaves finer particles – pollen grains, tiny wax fragments, and forest dust – in the honey. While many of these are nutritionally beneficial (pollen in particular contributes to the honey’s antioxidant and nutritional properties), visible particulates reduce the honey’s appeal in formal market channels.

Adulteration: The premium reputation of Sundarbans honey has created a significant incentive for adulteration — the addition of sugar syrup, water, or lower-quality honey to increase volume. Much honey sold labelled as “Sundarbans khalisa honey” in urban markets is adulterated, and the prevalence of this practice undermines both the economic returns for genuine mouals and the reputation of the product overall. Research on honey authentication in Bangladesh has confirmed clear distinctions between genuine Sundarbans honey and adulterated products based on physicochemical parameters, but these tests are not routinely applied at the point of sale.

Inconsistent flavour profiles: Without standardised processing or blending, the flavour and colour of honey vary significantly from batch to batch, making it difficult to sell at premium prices in markets that expect consistency.

Traditional Storage and Local Processing

In the traditional value chain, the honey collected by mouals is brought back to the village and sold either directly to local traders or to mohajon (money-lenders) who may also serve as honey merchants. Processing at this stage is typically limited to straining through finer cloth filters to remove remaining debris. The honey is then stored in ceramic or plastic containers or repackaged into smaller vessels for direct sale.

One early example of more sophisticated processing was documented at South Bengal Food Products in Khulna, which packaged Sundarbans honey in 50, 100, and 200-gram glass jars with clear labelling of origin. This packaged honey retailed at a significant premium — approximately three times the price of unpackaged honey sold in bulk — demonstrating the value that branding and packaging can add to an already premium product.

The BEDS Model: Cooperative Processing

The most significant example of systematic improvement in Sundarbans honey processing is the work of BEDS (Bangladesh Environment and Development Society), a non-governmental organisation that has been working with Sundarbans honey collectors since 2016.

In collaboration with the Japan Environmental Education Forum (JEEF) and with grant assistance from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BEDS implemented a project on livelihood improvement for poor honey collectors through coast watershed conservation around the Sundarbans. Under this project, the Sundarbans Honey Collectors Cooperative Society Ltd was formally registered with the Department of Cooperatives, Government of Bangladesh, initially with 50 honey collector families.

A honey processing and packaging centre was established beside the Harinagar Bazar in Munshigonj, operated by members of the cooperative. This facility provides:

Standardised straining and filtration: The cooperative uses graduated cloth and mesh filters to remove impurities more effectively than field processing, producing a cleaner, more consistent product.

Moisture reduction: The processing centre includes basic equipment for reducing honey moisture content before packaging, extending shelf life, and bringing the product closer to export standards.

Hygienic packaging: Honey processed through the cooperative is packaged in food-grade containers under cleaner conditions than traditional field processing allows.

Quality control: Consistent batch testing to verify honey quality before packaging, allowing the cooperative to represent its product accurately to buyers.

BEDS also introduced honey candy production as an innovation — a value-added product that converts raw honey into a confection form that is more stable, portable, and suitable for gifting and tourism markets. Honey candy is described as “a new innovation for Bangladesh” at the time of its introduction through the cooperative. Capacity building training on honey processing and candy-making has been provided to cooperative members, adding a new income stream beyond raw honey sales.

The cooperative model addresses multiple problems simultaneously: it gives smallholders access to processing infrastructure they could not individually afford; it establishes collective bargaining power with buyers and traders; it provides a framework for quality standardisation; and it creates the institutional structure needed to apply for certifications and access premium markets.

The Value Chain — Economics from Forest to Consumer

How the Money Flows (and Why the Mutual Gets So Little)

Understanding the economics of Sundarbans honey requires tracing the full value chain from the moment a moual cuts a honeycomb in the forest to the moment a consumer opens a jar purchased from a Dhaka supermarket or a Japanese importer.

At the beginning of the chain, the mutual benefit bears the highest costs and the highest risks. The expedition financing — a lakh of taka or more for boat hire, plus loans for food and equipment — must be repaid regardless of how successful the season is. The Forest Department permit costs must be paid. The Mohajon lending money at interest must be repaid. If a season is poor, the mutual returns home in debt.

In a good season, each mutual gains between 40,000 and 60,000 taka in profits (approximately USD 350 to 530 at current exchange rates) — representing earnings from roughly 400 kilograms of honey. At the farmgate price that locals typically receive from traders, this works out to approximately 100 to 150 taka per kilogram of honey.

That same kilogram of honey, after minimal processing and repackaging by an urban trader, sells in Dhaka at 400 to 600 taka per kilogram. Packaged in branded glass jars and sold through organised retail, it retails at 800 taka or more. Exported to Japan — where Sundarbans honey has been sold at premium prices since the 1990s — it commands the equivalent of over 1,000 taka per kilogram. The mutual who risked his life to harvest it receives somewhere between 10 and 15 per cent of its final retail value.

Middlemen — local traders, urban wholesalers, and export houses — capture the majority of the value created by the mutual labour and risk. The locals are deprived of a fair price for the honey they risk their lives to collect, while the middlemen profit from it. This economic structure is not unique to Sundarbans honey — it is the standard structure of most smallholder commodity supply chains in developing economies — but its inequity is particularly stark given the physical danger mouals face and the exceptional quality of the product they produce.

Beeswax: The Overlooked Co-Product

Alongside honey, the collection expedition produces significant quantities of beeswax — the material from which the honeycomb itself is constructed. After the honey is extracted by squeezing, the remaining wax structure is collected, melted down, filtered, and moulded into blocks. The Sundarbans produces an estimated 600 quintals of beeswax annually alongside its honey harvest.

Beeswax has diverse industrial applications: in cosmetics (as a base in lip balms, creams, and polishes), in candle-making, in wood polishing, in pharmaceuticals, and in several industrial processes. Carbon fibre sheets used in beekeeping equipment are one application. Export prices for high-quality beeswax have generally tracked honey prices, making it a meaningful supplementary income source for models.

The wax market, like the honey market, has its own quality gradations. The purest, lightest-coloured wax — produced from fresh combs with minimal contamination — commands the highest prices. Dark wax, produced from old combs or processed with excessive heat, sells at lower grades. Cooperative processing that allows careful temperature control and filtration of wax produces a higher-quality product than field processing.

Export Markets and Price Trends

Sundarbans honey has been exported from Bangladesh for decades, with Japan and India historically serving as the primary markets. Japan in particular has a long history of importing Sundarbans honey for high-end retail, recognising its unique mangrove floral character and the absence of agricultural pesticides (the Sundarbans, as a protected forest with no agricultural activity, produces honey with essentially zero pesticide residue – a feature of increasing commercial value in markets sensitive to chemical contamination in food).

Export prices rose from USD 2,344 per tonne in 2023 to USD 2,448 per tonne in 2024, reflecting both quality improvements and global price shifts. The United States has emerged as a new growth market alongside Japan and India. The EU market represents a significant potential opportunity, but EU food safety standards — including strict limits on moisture content, contaminants, and documentation requirements — require quality control systems that Bangladeshi exporters are only beginning to develop.

The Sundarbans honey market is approximately 200 to 300 metric tonnes per year from Bangladesh alone — a meaningful volume but still small in global honey trade terms. The growth potential is significant, constrained principally by the fixed ecological limit on bee colonies in the forest and the challenge of improving quality consistency enough to access premium markets at scale.

The GI Tag and What It Means

A Hard-Won Recognition

In one of the most important recent developments in the Sundarbans honey story, Bangladesh secured official Geographical Indication (GI) status for Sundarbans honey in 2025. The GI certificate was formally issued on 30 April 2025, during a ceremony held at the Foreign Service Academy in Dhaka, organised by the Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks under the Ministry of Industries in celebration of World Intellectual Property Day.

The path to this recognition was long and politically fraught. The initial application was submitted by the Bagerhat Deputy Commissioner’s office on 7 August 2017, with further documentation added in June 2024. The process was complicated by India’s prior action: West Bengal Forest Development Corporation Limited applied for GI rights for Sundarbans honey on July 12, 2021, and the GI tag was issued on January 2, 2024 — sparking significant controversy in Bangladesh, where the majority of the Sundarbans territory lies and where Bangladesh is the primary extractor of the honey. Bangladesh produces 200 to 300 metric tonnes annually, versus India’s approximately 137 metric tonnes over seven years.

The Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka characterised the situation as Bangladesh having lost the GI status of Sundarbans honey due to the negligence of the authorities concerned — a pointed institutional critique that contributed to the urgency with which Bangladesh subsequently finalised its own GI application.

With both countries now holding GI status for their respective portions of the Sundarbans honey, the situation represents a novel case of transboundary GI in which the same product – produced from the same ecosystem that straddles an international border – carries simultaneous GI protection from two different countries. The legal and commercial implications of this situation are still being worked out in intellectual property law circles.

What the GI Tag Changes

For Sundarbans honey producers, the GI tag provides a legal instrument to protect the product’s identity and authenticity. The GI recognition is expected to enhance its branding internationally, increasing both demand and export opportunities. Over 6,000 registered honey collectors operate in the Sundarbans area, and the recognition is anticipated to provide better economic prospects for these forest-dependent communities.

But the GI tag alone changes nothing without the institutional infrastructure to enforce it and the quality control systems to back it up. A GI label on a jar of honey means nothing if the consumer cannot verify that what is inside the jar is actually what the label claims. Researchers have proposed a blockchain-based registry to record each batch’s origin coordinates, harvest date, and laboratory test results, with QR-coded harvest tags linking physical honey samples to digital records that consumers and regulators can verify. Regular sampling and independent laboratory audits would reinforce compliance with moisture, pollen, and chemical benchmarks.

These proposals represent a vision for what a modern, verifiable Sundarbans honey supply chain could look like. Implementing them requires investment in technology, training, and institutional capacity that goes significantly beyond what currently exists at the village and cooperative level.

Innovation and Modernisation in the Field

What Modern Methods Have Been Adopted

When people speak of “modern honey harvesting methods” in the Sundarbans context, it is important to be precise about what has and has not changed. The fundamental constraint — that Apis dorsata cannot be domesticated and that its hives cannot be managed — means that the core process of harvest remains anchored in traditional techniques that are genuinely well-adapted to the ecological reality.

What has changed, and is continuing to change, falls into several distinct categories:

Protective equipment: Increasing numbers of models are adopting more effective personal protective equipment. While the traditional gamcha face covering remains the most common protection, some collectors — particularly those working with NGO-supported cooperatives or formal training programmes — have access to basic protective veils and gloves. Full beekeeping suits remain rare in the field due to their cost and the extreme heat and humidity of the Sundarbans environment, but partial protection reduces injury rates.

Improved smoke materials: NGO programmes have promoted the use of specific smoking materials that produce more effective, cooler, and more sustained smoke than traditional materials in some areas. The key principle — that cool, thick smoke is more effective than hot, thin smoke at calming bees — has been reinforced through training, leading to more consistent smoke preparation among trained collectors.

Food-grade containers: The shift from traditional clay pots to food-grade plastic drums and containers for honey storage during collection represents one of the most practically impactful quality improvements. Clay pots can introduce flavour contaminants and are less hygienic than purpose-designed food containers. Food-grade containers reduce contamination risk and are easier to clean.

GPS and communication devices: Some Mual groups now carry mobile phones or GPS devices into the forest, improving navigation, emergency communication, and the ability to report tiger attacks or medical emergencies. Satellite coverage in the deepest forest areas remains patchy, but communication technology has reduced the isolation that previously characterised forest expeditions.

Trained guards with noise-making gear: Forest officials now require groups to carry trained guards with loud noise-making equipment — drums, horns, and other devices — for tiger deterrence. This safety measure, while not directly a honey production improvement, reduces mortality and injury rates, allowing experienced collectors to continue working.

Honey refractometers: The most impactful single tool for quality improvement is the honey refractometer — a simple, inexpensive optical instrument that measures the refractive index of honey, from which moisture content can be precisely calculated. Where these are available, models can test their honey in the field and make decisions about additional sun-drying or aeration to reduce moisture before transport. Some cooperative programmes have made refractometers available to member collectors.

The Domesticated Beekeeping Complement

While Apis dorsata cannot be managed in boxes, a parallel development has occurred alongside wild honey collection: the expansion of managed beekeeping using domesticated Apis cerana (the Asian hive bee) and, for commercial operations, the introduced Apis mellifera (the European honeybee). These species accept management in wooden hive boxes and can be maintained year-round in apiaries near the Sundarbans.

Managed beekeeping using Apis mellifera has grown substantially in Bangladesh, with approximately 2,500 commercial beekeepers now operating nationally, producing around 6,000 metric tonnes of honey annually. Some commercial beekeepers run migratory operations, moving their hive boxes to follow flowering seasons — visiting mustard fields in winter, then moving toward the Sundarbans fringe in spring as the mangrove flowers bloom.

For Sundarbans fringe communities, NGO programmes have promoted managed beekeeping using Apis cerana as an alternative or supplementary income source that does not require entry into the forest. These managed hives produce smaller quantities of honey than Apis dorsata wild harvests — typically two to five kilograms per hive per year for Apis cerana versus 40 to 60 kilograms per wild Apis dorsata colony — but they can be maintained safely, without permits, without tiger risk, and without the debt financing required for forest expeditions.

The Bangladesh Institute of Apiculture (BIA), Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC), and various NGOs have provided technological support, training, and hive equipment to communities seeking to develop managed beekeeping capacity. The BSCIC’s Development of Beekeeping Through Modern Technology Project has specifically promoted managed apiculture as a modernisation pathway for honey production more broadly.

Processing Technology: What’s Possible and What’s Being Used

At the processing level, the gap between current practice and what is technically achievable is largest, and the potential improvement most significant.

Honey extractors: Mechanical honey extractors — centrifuges that spin cut honeycomb sections to extract honey without the need for hand-squeezing — produce cleaner honey with lower contamination than manual extraction. They are standard equipment in commercial beekeeping operations globally. For Sundarbans honey, adapting extractors for use with wild Apis dorsata combs — which are larger and structured differently from managed hive combs — presents engineering challenges, but some cooperative processing centres have begun using adapted centrifugal extractors with positive results.

Dehumidifiers and drying rooms: Controlled dehumidification is the most effective method for reducing honey moisture content after harvest. Honey stored in a dehumidified room at a controlled temperature and low humidity will naturally release moisture to the surrounding air over a period of days, bringing the moisture content down to acceptable levels. Establishing dehumidification capacity at cooperative processing centres near the Sundarbans is a key investment need that some BEDS-supported facilities are beginning to address.

Fine filtration systems: Multi-stage filtration using graduated mesh screens produces honey that is visually clearer and more consistent than cloth-filtered products, while still retaining pollen and other beneficial components. Filtration systems appropriate for small-scale cooperative processing centres are available and affordable.

Laboratory testing: Basic physicochemical testing — moisture content, Brix (sugar concentration), colour, and presence of adulterants — is increasingly being conducted at processing centres and by export houses. The Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) has been providing test reports on Sundarbans honey quality, and the documentation of nutritional value was provided to the DPDT as part of the GI application process. Expanding routine laboratory testing to cover a greater proportion of the total harvest would substantially improve quality assurance.

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Sustainability, Conservation, and the Future

Is Wild Honey Collection Sustainable?

A fundamental question underlies all discussions of modernisation in Sundarbans honey harvesting: is the wild collection of Apis dorsata honey from the Sundarbans sustainable at current — let alone increased — levels?

The answer is that it depends entirely on how the collection is done. The traditional norm of cutting only the honey-bearing sections of the comb while leaving the brood sections intact is a genuine sustainability practice rooted in long practical experience. A colony whose brood is preserved can rebuild its honeycomb and honey stores, potentially allowing the same colony site to be harvested multiple times within a season and to be re-colonised in subsequent years.

But the norms of traditional sustainable practice are not uniformly followed. Economic pressure — the need to maximise the return on an expensive expedition investment — can lead collectors to take more from a hive than is sustainable. Illegal collectors, who enter the forest without permits and without any official oversight, face no accountability for unsustainable practices. Destructive harvesting — cutting entire combs, including brood, or using fire to drive bees from hives — can eliminate entire colonies and permanently reduce the density of bee populations in affected areas.

The Forest Department’s permit quotas and production targets are designed to limit total extraction to sustainable levels, but enforcement deep in the forest is difficult. The approximately 12,000 permits issued annually across the Sundarbans provide a regulated framework, but the volume of illegal forest entry means that actual extraction levels may significantly exceed permitted quantities.

Natural honey production in the Sundarbans has shown a long-term declining trend — production declined at approximately six per cent per year during the period from 1982–83 to 1993–94, though subsequent years have seen more variable performance. Climate change threatens this trend: rising sea levels are changing the salinity and hydrology of the Sundarbans, affecting mangrove tree health and flowering patterns; more intense cyclones periodically devastate forest sections; and the long-term projected loss of suitable mangrove habitat will reduce the bee population’s living space.

Conservationists remain divided on whether wild honey collection should continue in its current form or whether a transition towards managed beekeeping represents a more sustainable path. Some argue that honey collection should continue, as it deepens human connection with the forest and provides an economic rationale for the preservation of the mangrove ecosystem. Others support moving towards domesticated beekeeping for safer, sustainable income that removes the ecological pressure from wild bee populations.

The Role of NGOs and Government Programs

For over 15 years, the non-government organisation BEDS has worked on Sundarbans honey, developing the cooperative model, improving processing, and advocating for better prices for collectors. Other NGOs and government programmes have contributed pieces of the modernisation puzzle: training programmes in improved collection techniques, health and safety equipment provision, managed beekeeping promotion, market access facilitation, and advocacy for policy improvements.

The government’s role has evolved from pure forest authority — issuing permits, collecting revenue, and enforcing restrictions — toward a more developmental role that recognises the livelihood dimensions of honey collection. The Forest Department now provides financial assistance to collectors injured in tiger attacks after verification and actively participates in safety protocols for forest entry.

The GI registration represents perhaps the most significant recent policy step — one that, properly implemented, could transform the economics of the entire supply chain by creating a legally protected premium product category that funnels more value to the collectors who produce it.

What the Future Could Look Like

A realistic vision for the modernisation of Sundarbans honey harvesting in the coming decade might include:

Strengthened cooperatives: Expansion of the cooperative model to cover a larger proportion of rural families, with processing infrastructure improvements that allow consistent quality control and moisture management at cooperative centres near the Sundarbans.

Blockchain traceability: Implementation of blockchain-based origin verification systems, with QR-coded harvest tags linking honey batches to specific collection dates, locations, and collector identities. This technology would allow buyers anywhere in the world to verify the provenance of their honey and provide a powerful tool against adulteration.

Certified organic status: With essentially zero pesticide exposure from the protected forest environment, Sundarbans honey is a natural candidate for organic certification under international standards. Securing recognised organic certification would open access to premium market channels in Europe, North America, and Japan.

Managed Apis cerana apiaries as supplements: Expanding managed beekeeping among Sundarbans fringe families as a supplementary income source — not a replacement for wild collection but a year-round economic buffer that reduces the pressure on families to enter the forest and reduces the debt spiral that drives unsustainable harvesting.

Better compensation and insurance: Developing accessible insurance products for mutuals that compensate for injury, death, or poor seasons would reduce the economic desperation that leads to unsafe and unsustainable practices.

Processing centre expansion: Additional BEDS-style processing centres, with dehumidification equipment, fine filtration systems, and basic laboratory testing capacity, located in the main rural communities around the Sundarbans, would allow a much larger proportion of the total harvest to meet export-quality standards.

The Unchanging Heart

The most important thing to understand about modernising Sundarbans honey harvesting is what cannot and should not be changed.

The heart of this enterprise — a model moving quietly through a mangrove forest at dawn, reading the flight lines of ten thousand giant bees, preparing a bundle of henta leaves, climbing toward a four-foot curtain of golden comb while a colleague signals their position with a cuckoo call — is irreducible. No machine can find these hives. No algorithm can read these bees. No drone can safely enter this forest without the guidance of someone who has spent decades learning its rhythms.

The knowledge that the moles carry — accumulated across generations, encoded in calluses and instincts, and the specific angle of a smoke-torch and the particular sound that a healthy colony makes versus an irritated one — is itself an irreplaceable form of ecological expertise. It is knowledge that cannot be Google-searched, cannot be university-taught, and cannot be industrialised.

What modernisation can do – and what the best programmes working in this space are attempting – is surround that irreducible core of traditional knowledge with better tools, better markets, better prices, better safety, and better institutional support. It can give the model a refractometer so his honey tests below 20 per cent moisture. It can give his cooperative a dehumidification room so the honey that arrives in June is still excellent in December. It can give his honey a QR code so the person opening a jar in Tokyo knows exactly where and when it was harvested and that no tiger widow’s husband died to fill it.

The khalisa trees will bloom next April. The Apis dorsata will arrive from wherever they spend their winters. The honey will accumulate in four-foot curtains of golden comb, swaying slightly in the tidal breeze, four feet above the mangrove roots, in the shadow of a forest that has been making this honey for ten thousand years.

The question is whether the people who come to harvest it — the mouals of the Sundarbans, with their cotton face coverings and their smoke torches and their ‘kuku’ calls through the mangrove understory — will receive a fair price for what they risk to bring it to the world.

That question is as modern as any technology. And answering it well is, finally, the most important modernisation of all.

Appendix: Key Statistics at a Glance

Annual honey production (Bangladesh Sundarbans): 200–300 metric tonnes (varying year to year)

Annual beeswax production: approximately 600 quintals (60 metric tonnes)

Number of registered collectors: approximately 2,000–6,000 active manuals per season

Permits issued annually (across all ranges): approximately 12,000 for all resource extraction; 437 honey permits in 2024–25 for 2,858 muals

Main honey species: Apis dorsata (giant honeybee / chak moumachhi)

Collection season: April 1 to June 30

Main floral sources: khalisa (Aegiceras corniculatum), goran (Ceriops decandra), keora (Sonneratia apetala), pashur (Xylocarpus granatum), bain, hargoja

GI status: Registered as a Bangladesh GI product in 2025; India GI registered in 2024

Export markets: Japan (primary), India, United States (emerging), EU (potential)

Export price: USD 2,448 per metric tonne (2024)

Honey moisture content (field-processed): typically 24–25%; target for export: below 20%

Average seasonal earnings per month: 40,000–60,000 taka (USD 350–530)

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