Surviving the Gold Rush: The Honey Hunters of Bangladesh

Smoke fills the air; in the haze the bees scatter, revealing precious liquid gold - honey. It has not been easy to find the nest of the world's largest bee - Apis dorsata and the stings delivered from this fierce bee are the least of the Honey Hunter's worries.

The bees live in the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, and they share their territory with a population of maneating Royal Bengal Tigers. Mauling men is an unexplained anomaly of these Bengal Tigers; they kill approximately a dozen people a year during the harvesting season. The tigers force the men to sleep on their boats, leaving them prey to another predator; armed pirates.

The honey hunters, their shoes tied to their feet, sludge through deep mud, watching for tiger tracks and gripping their palm frond torches. A loud explosive firework called a Tiger Bomb is usually lit off when a fresh track is discovered in order to frighten the animal away.

Once a hive is found, the torches are lit and a thick smoke drives the bees from the nest. A gumsa is used as face protection from the bees, however, because of the extreme heat, shirts and long pants are not as commonly used as forms of bee protection.

The honey hunter uses his hand to scrape the remaining bees off the hive before cutting a piece of the comb off. Only a small portion of the honey comb is removed in order for the bees to survive and to allow for another harvest.

Working by candlelight on their boat, honey is filtered and transferred into storage vessels. The season lasts a tense three months, but the Honey Hunters reward is grand - about $280, more than half their annual income.