The Sweet Essence of Nusa Nipa
Flores has a wealth of natural resources, including wild honey from the forests on the island, which lies between the Sawu and Flores seas. Its diverse geography produces honey of varied flavors.
On Flores, one of the three largest islands in East Nusa Tenggara, honey can be found in a mangrove forest. On the same island, honey is also found in mountains forests. The journey between the two distinct regions takes less than four hours.
Flores residents have long collected the various honey types found on the island. Unfortunately, as with the fate of its coffee – packaged and marketed as another region’s product – Flores honey is mostly exported to other regions that repackage and market the Flores honey as their own.
Another issue for Flores honey is its unsustainable method of harvesting wild honey. “We used to cut down the entire hive. Each hive could only be harvested once, as the bees flew away afterwards,” said Anselmus, a honey collector from Darat Pantai village in Sikka regency.
Honey collectors also used torches to drive away the bees.The flames from the torches killed the bees or, at the very least, harmed them. Because of these methods, each wild hive could be harvested only once.
“If we had cut down a hive in one area, we had to wait months for the bees to return to that same spot. While the hive is being rebuilt, we need to find honey elsewhere,” Anselmus said.
Hunting for wild honey is not easy. Most honeybees build their hives in forests far from human settlements. Some bees build their hives in trees that are difficult to climb, such as the bangeris (Koompassia excelsa) tree, with its tall trunk and slippery bark. One of the tree’s common names is honeybee tree.
Suhartono, another honey collector in Darat Pantai village, said that locals used to press the hives to extract the honey. This method killed any bee larvae in the hive and squeezed out impurities along with the honey.
“We used to cut down hives with rusty machetes. We weren’t thinking about hygiene. The most important thing was to get as much honey as possible,” Suhartono said, because the honey was sold for cheap, only Rp 15,000 (US1.14) per kilogram.
“We didn’t know the market price, so we just accepted it,” he said.
Improvements
The situation frustrated Yohanes Lewonamang Hayong, also called Anis. He once worked at an international non-governmental organization, where he made many friends outside of the province. It was then that Anis saw with his own eyes how Flores honey was repackaged and resold at high prices.
“The quality had declined, as the honey had been mixed with other ingredients. The price, however, was much higher than in Flores,” he said.
Such frustrations led Anis to learn about proper honey hunting management. He then used this knowledge to establish proper wild honey harvesting methods in villages in East Flores and Sikka.
He began with Bellen village, East Flores, in 2013. Today, Anis partners with honey collectors in four other villages: Nobo village in East Flores and Darat Pantai, Wae Terang and Colosiabe villages in Sikka.
In his home village of Duntana in East Flores, however, he has yet to establish a partnership with local honey collectors. “I cannot force people. I can only try to introduce this new method,” said Anis.
Through partnerships, Anis encourages local honey collectors to use methods that enable them to harvest honey several times from a single wild hive in one season. The first thing is not to drive the bees away permanently. “The bees need to be dispelled the hive only when collecting the honeycomb,” he said.
The collectors are also taught to switch from using torches filled with dried leaves to coconut fiber, which produces thick smoke. “The smoke alone is enough to drive out the bees,” Anis said.
Furthermore, the honey collectors should not cut down the entire hive from a tree to harvest the wax combs within. They need only cut the part of the hive containing the honeycomb, and the rest should be left on the tree.
“The honey is, in fact, food for the larvae. You cannot take all of it. If the larvae die, there will be no more bees. How can there be honey if there are no bees?” Anis said.
At most, only two-thirds of the hive should be cut. “A part of it should be left behind on the tree. A 2-centimeter-thick breadth of honeycomb must be preserved as well as the part of the hive containing the larvae, so that there is still honey left for the larvae. Therefore, the bees will not fly away and will continue to nurture their colony after harvesting,” Anis continued.
During the rainy season, hives can be rebuilt to its original size within three weeks. During the dry season, however, it takes six weeks for a hive to completely recover after a honeycomb harvest, and the bee colony population remains the same as before harvesting.
“The methods we use now are more environmentally friendly. It protects the environment,” Anis said.
New technique
Anis has also encouraged the honey collectors to apply a new technique for extracting the honey from the harvested honeycomb. As in many other regions in Indonesia, Flores’s honey collectors usually crushed the wax comb. They believed that this way, they would get as much honey as possible from the honeycomb.
However, this technique only resulted in impure honey containing water, debris, and even larvae. “Now, we just drain the wax combs above a bucket. It takes longer than if we crushed the comb, but the result is much better. The honey is clean and pure,” Anis said.
Honey collectors and other villagers are also encouraged to preserve the forests around their village. The flowering plants that grow there are the source of food for honeybees. Deforestation would meanless and less vegetation for the bees to build their hives and find food. Sustainable methods like those applied by Anselmus and his colleagues help preserve the sweet essence of the island, which Flores anthropologist Petu Sareng Orin Bao dubbed Nusa Nipa (“snake island”), referring to its snake-like shape and the serpentine mythical being that brought wealth to its people.