The Baka pygmies are expert hunter-gatherers, famous for harvesting the honey of wild bees in the forest canopy. The opportunities for building natural nests there are so numerous that it is mere illusion to imagine domesticating the bees’ activity in such an environment. So, the Baka must employ a highly-developed range of skills and knowledge to overcome the cunning of the bees.
In New Zealand, beekeepers roam hundreds of thousands of acres daily to tend to their bees scattered across community and sacred lands.
Every year, in the south-west of India, hunter-gatherers await the arrival of the migratory bee: apis dorsata, the giant bee, and the most aggressive in the world. As participants in this dangerous harvest become increasingly rare, the tribes have set themselves the mission of training their sons and nephews in order to assure the survival of their families and prevent this centuries-old tradition from dying out.
Around 13,000 years ago, the bees that had settled in Northern Europe were driven out by the cold. In the Cevennes, whose valleys form a natural rampart, colonies of pure stock managed to subsist, by adapting to the environment. Men and women have returned to ancestral traditions in order to protect them…