Twice a year — once in spring, once in autumn — a small group of men from villages in the Lamjung and Kaski districts of Nepal climb cliff faces hundreds of feet high to harvest honey from hives that hang like lanterns from the rock.
They are Gurung, one of the indigenous peoples of the Annapurna foothills. And they have been doing this for as long as anyone can remember.
The tools
The equipment is almost entirely handmade. Long bamboo ladders — *tangos* — are lowered down the cliff face and anchored at the top by a team. A single hunter descends on a rope, carrying a long-handled basket and a smoking torch made from green wood. The smoke subdues the bees. The basket catches the honeycomb as it falls.
There are no harnesses in the Western climbing sense. The rope is hand-twisted. A fall would be fatal.
The bees
The hives belong to *Apis laboriosa*, the Himalayan cliff bee — the largest honeybee species in the world, with a wingspan that can reach 3 centimeters. They build single-comb open nests on cliff faces, always on south-facing rock, always above 2,500 meters. They are not domesticated and cannot be. The harvest is entirely wild.
Spring versus autumn
The spring harvest is the one that produces mad honey. During spring, the rhododendron forests that blanket the Annapurna foothills are in full bloom, and *Apis laboriosa* forages almost exclusively on them. The resulting honey contains significant concentrations of grayanotoxins.
The autumn harvest is different — rhododendrons are no longer in bloom, and the bees forage more broadly. Autumn honey tends to be milder, lower in grayanotoxins, and closer to conventional honey in effect. This is the grade we call Medicinal.
What the hunters are paid
This is the part the industry rarely talks about. Mad honey commands significant prices in the Western market — $150 to $400 per jar. The hunters who produce it have historically received a tiny fraction of that.
We pay directly, above market rate, with no intermediary. The exact figures are between us and the families we work with — but the principle is simple: the people taking the risk deserve the majority of the reward.
A tradition under pressure
The number of hunters who know how to do this work is shrinking. It is physically dangerous, the training takes years, and younger generations have more options. Climate change is also affecting rhododendron bloom timing, making harvests less predictable.
Every jar sold through Annapurna Honey is a direct contribution to keeping this practice economically viable for the communities that invented it.