Rusli, 52, takes a rest after walking through the forest before climbing a tree in the jungle of Moyo Island, Sumbawa Besar, West Nusa Tenggara, to take a peek inside a beehive on Tuesday (28/3/2017). Sumbawa forest honey from Moyo Island is usually harvested in August and September. The annual harvest is done to maintain the quality of honey.
Ruslan, 35, briskly walked up and down a pathway on Tuesday (28/3/2017) morning. He slashed the bushes in front of him with a machete. After some three kilometers, the father of three stopped in his tracks and pointed upwards. “There’s a honey house,” he said.
Some of the branches of the 80-centimeter-wide tree had beehives, what Ruslan referred to as a “honey house”. The lowest beehive was 25 meters high.
The protected forest where the tree is located is on Moyo Island in northern Sumbawa regency, West Nusa Tenggara. The island is famed for its Mata Jitu Waterfall and as a producer of high-quality honey. A majority of Sumbawa honey is sourced from the forest on Moyo Island.
“Moyo Island produces honey, but Sumbawa Island gets all the fame as a wild honey producer,” lamented Syuaib, 48, a honey hunter and Ruslan’s cousin. He said that the best time to harvest honey is in September and October. In other months, you can still find beehives, but not as many as in these two months.
In the past few years, Syuaib has reduced his honey-hunting activities as he could no longer walk dozens of kilometers through the lush forest. It has also been getting much more difficult for him to climb 25 meters up the honey trees and to bear the bee stings.
“I can have fever all over my body if a bee stings me,” he said.
The beehive Ruslan and Syuaib found on Tuesday morning was relatively close to their village of Labuhan Aji on Moyo Island – only seven kilometers away.
The journey to the location of the honey tree involved a four-kilometer motorbike ride. Motorbikes can only be used in daytime. The pathway is filled with holes and big rocks and has extremely steep uphill and downhill sections. Often, they had to get off their motorbikes to push them. At the end of the pathway, Ruslan and Syuaib continued their journey on foot.
Livelihood
Hunting for forest honey is a major source of income for the males of Moyo Island, which comprises the villages of Labuhan Aji and Sebotok. Other sources of livelihood include farming cashews or rice, fishing and driving a motorcycle taxi. “Almost all males in the village are honey hunters. Some have been honey hunters since they were teenagers,” said Labuan Aji resident Syafruddin, 56, who had stopped working as a honey hunter.
The increasing distance honey hunters have to traverse these days is too much for Syafruddin. His age also made him more concerned about falling while harvesting honey up in trees.
Honey hunting is done both day and night. Hunting at night is considered to be safer against bee stings. “The bees cannot see clearly at night. We do not use any protection as the bees will attack us. Even in dark, we can still see the honey house when we are up in the trees,” Ruslan said. Before harvesting the beehives, hunters drive away the bees from the hives using smoke from burning dead branches.
Honey hunters in Moyo then squeeze the beehives on location. One hive can be squeezed three times in the span of 10 days.
However, Sumbawa Forest Honey Network (JMHS) head Julmansyah said that squeezing beehives is not the proper way to harvest honey as it would lessen the honey’s quality.
JMHS currently has 400 forest honey hunters as members. This is only a small fraction of the total number of forest honey hunters in Sumbawa regency, including on Moyo. JMHS members produce about 10 tons of honey per year. “The total production of forest honey in Sumbawa is about 150 tons per year,” he said.
According to Julmansyah, the forest honey bees in Sumbawa are of the species Apis dorsata. Similar bees can also be found in forests in Sumatra, Sulawesi and Papua. On Sumbawa, in the last few years, bees of this species have commonly been found on small islands around Sumbawa, including on Moyo.
Sweet-scented
Moyo Island honey collector Syukur Tajeb, 65, said that he could collect 400 600-milliliter bottles of honey in a year. His total honey stock in a year can reach 240 liters.
Syukur said that he sold the Moyo Island honey for Rp 100,000 (US$7.50) per 600-milliliter bottle. Syukur bought the honey for Rp 60,000 per bottle from the hunters.
“Moyo Island honey is sweet-scented as it is taken from beehives in the forest. The scent is different from honey taken from cultivated bees,” Syukur said.
He added that there was usually two or three honey collectors in every hamlet in Labuhan Aji village.
The Sumbawa regional secretariat’s assistant of government affairs and people’s welfare, Muhammad Ikhsan, said that honey is an important commodity in Sumbawa. Almost all districts in Sumbawa have a honey-producing area, including on Moyo Island.
In the 22,537.9-hectare jungle of Moyo Island, billions of bees live and give benefits to the locals, who share the blessings with each other without greed, fighting, or claiming what is rightfully others’. When a producing beehive is harvested by other people, the original owner would just let it go.
