What is the honey collected from cliffs in Yunnan called honey?

The honey collected from cliffs in Yunnan is called cliff honey.

Cliff honey is the honey brewed by the big black bee, which can't be picked by artificial breeding. The big black bee, also known as the Himalayan beehive, is the largest kind of bee in the genus Apis. An adult bee can be up to 3 cm long. They are only distributed in Nepal, Bhutan, northeastern India, Tibet and Yunnan in China.

Because the big black bees build their hives on the remote mountain cliffs, rope ladders are their main climbing tools, which makes honey gathering full of risks. Many people bluntly say that this job is not suitable for the timid.

In order to collect honey, honey collectors usually wear protective clothing to prevent being stung by swarms of big black bees. Before collecting, they will disperse the huge bees from the hive with smoke to reduce the risk of being stung. However, in fact, some hives are more than two meters in diameter, and there are thousands of bees in each hive, which is often impossible to prevent.

The principle of collecting honey from cliff honey

Cliff honey is considered to be purer and healthier than ordinary honey, and its value recognition is higher. In addition, it is more and more precious because of the difficulty in collecting and the scarcity of the honey. Usually, the price per kilogram can exceed 3 yuan RMB.

However, honey pickers have always kept a good habit of collecting honey. They never collect honey from all the hives in the same place. One honey source only collects it once, leaving enough honey for the bees, so as to ensure that the big black bee will come back in the next season. This is the wisdom of the harmony between man and nature, and it is also the basic rule left by the tradition of collecting honey.