Beekeeping & Honey of Nepal: Production, Bee Species & Mad Honey

Beekeeping, known in Nepali as mauri palan, is a fast-growing part of Nepal's agriculture. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD) Statistical Information on Nepalese Agriculture, the country produced about 5,168 metric tonnes (MT) of honey from roughly 248,995 managed beehives in fiscal year 2021/22 (Bikram Sambat 2078/79), giving an average of around 20.75 kilograms of honey per hive. The previous year, 2020/21, output was lower at about 4,062 MT from a similar hive base, so productivity per hive rather than hive numbers drove the increase.

Production has climbed from an earlier base: in 2016/17 (BS 2073/74) the country had roughly 240,000 hives producing about 3,500 tonnes. Despite this growth, government and academic reports note that Nepal harvests far below its natural capacity, citing a potential of close to 10,000 MT per year given the country's exceptional bee flora.

One reason for this is that Nepal has one of the widest altitudinal ranges for honey production of any country, with hives and wild colonies found from about 70 metres in the Terai plains up to roughly 4,200 metres in the high Himalaya. This spread supports many flowering seasons and distinct honey types, but it also fragments the sector into lowland commercial operations and remote hill and mountain beekeeping with very different yields and access to markets.

Nepal is unusually rich in honey bees, hosting four native (indigenous) species plus one introduced species. The four natives are the Himalayan cliff bee Apis laboriosa, the giant honey bee Apis dorsata, the little honey bee Apis florea, and the Asian hive bee Apis cerana. The single exotic species is the European honey bee, Apis mellifera, prized worldwide for its high yields.

Only two of these can be kept in movable-frame hives for commercial honey production: the native Apis cerana and the imported Apis mellifera. Managed beekeeping with Apis cerana began in Nepal around 1960, while Apis mellifera was introduced roughly three decades later, around 1990-1992, and quickly transformed commercial and migratory beekeeping in the Terai and mid-hills because of its far larger colonies and honey crops. The other three species, Apis laboriosa, Apis dorsata and Apis florea, are wild and cannot be domesticated; their honey is gathered by traditional hunting and squeezing of open combs rather than by hive management.

Apis cerana remains the mainstay of hill and mountain villages because it tolerates cold, is resistant to some diseases and needs little investment, though its yields are modest. Apis mellifera dominates the warmer lowlands and is the workhorse of Nepal's larger honey enterprises. The coexistence of native and exotic bees is also a conservation concern, because introduced Apis mellifera can compete with and spread diseases to native species.

Apis laboriosa, the Himalayan giant honey bee, is the world's largest honey bee, with workers reaching up to about 3 centimetres in length. Long treated as a high-altitude subspecies of Apis dorsata, it was recognised as a full, distinct species in 2020. It nests almost exclusively on sheer cliff faces, typically between about 2,500 and 3,000 metres, and forages as high as roughly 4,100 metres, building single enormous open combs beneath rock overhangs that can hold as much as 60 kilograms of honey.

Nearly the entire world population of this bee is concentrated in the mid-mountains of central Nepal, above all in the districts of Kaski, Lamjung, Gorkha and Myagdi around the Annapurna range. Harvesting its honey is the dangerous, centuries-old practice of honey hunting, carried out mostly by Gurung communities who descend on rope-and-bamboo ladders down cliffs, using smoke to drive off the bees and long poles to cut the combs. The hunts are seasonal, communal and steeped in ritual, and have become a draw for adventure tourism.

This wild resource is under pressure. In districts such as Lamjung and Kaski, local honey hunters report that cliff colony numbers have fallen by an estimated 20-30 percent over the past two decades. The commonly cited causes include deforestation and loss of nesting cliffs, overharvesting for the lucrative mad-honey trade, forest fires, pesticide use, climate change, and competition from introduced bees, raising concern for both the species and the traditions built around it.

The cliff honey of Apis laboriosa is famous worldwide as 'mad honey' or 'red honey'. Its intoxicating quality comes from grayanotoxins, natural compounds the bees pick up when they forage on the nectar of high-altitude rhododendrons, especially Rhododendron arboreum (lali gurans), Nepal's national flower. The high-altitude Himalayan environment tends to produce rhododendron nectar with some of the highest grayanotoxin concentrations found anywhere, and the toxin becomes concentrated in spring-harvested cliff honey.

Grayanotoxins act on voltage-gated sodium channels in nerve and heart cells. In small amounts consumers report a warm, relaxing, mildly hallucinogenic effect, which is why mad honey is sought after and sells at wholesale prices several times higher than ordinary honey. In larger doses it causes 'mad honey disease' or wild-honey intoxication, with symptoms such as low blood pressure (hypotension), a slow heart rate (bradycardia), nausea, dizziness, blurred vision and, in serious cases, fainting and heart-rhythm disturbances. Clinical case series from Nepali hospitals document such poisonings, usually after eating raw cliff honey.

Because the potency varies from comb to comb and season to season, doses are unpredictable, and medical sources stress that mad honey should be treated with caution rather than as a casual food. The same viral fame that has made 'mad honey Nepal' a global search term has also driven up demand, prices and harvesting pressure on the wild cliff bee.

Most honey harvested in Nepal is multi-floral, drawn from mixed wild and cultivated blossoms, but the country's biodiversity also yields a range of prized unifloral honeys, in which one flower source dominates. The best known are chiuri (butter-tree) honey, mustard (tori) honey, rudilo honey from the aromatic Pogostemon shrub, buckwheat (phapar) honey, and sunflower honey. Nepal also produces honeydew honey collected from pine, spruce and oak in the mountains.

Each type carries a distinct colour, flavour and season. Mustard honey, produced in huge quantities in the Terai during the winter oilseed bloom, is light and granulates quickly. Chiuri honey, from the butter tree of the Chure and mid-hills, is dark and valued by indigenous communities. Buckwheat honey is dark and strong, while sunflower honey is bright and popular for its clean taste. This diversity is a genuine competitive advantage that Nepali marketers use to position their honey as specialty and single-origin.

The floral calendar also shapes how commercial beekeepers work. Because different crops and forests flower at different times and altitudes, Terai-based beekeepers move their Apis mellifera colonies from one bloom to the next through the year, a practice known as migratory beekeeping.

Beekeeping is promoted across Nepal as a low-cost, high-value livelihood that suits smallholders, women's groups and returnee migrants, since a few hives need little land and can be started with modest investment. Government support runs through the Beekeeping Development Section, formed in 1980, and later the Apiculture Development Centre and bee research under the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), with a long-established apiculture station at Godawari, Lalitpur.

Chitwan in the central Terai is regarded as Nepal's leading commercial beekeeping district, thanks to vast tracts of forest and farmland rich in mustard, rudilo, buckwheat and chiuri. Terai beekeeping with Apis mellifera is far more productive than hill beekeeping with Apis cerana; studies have found Terai per-hive yields several times higher than in the hills, and well-managed Apis mellifera colonies can produce large seasonal crops. Migratory beekeepers follow the blooms, typically moving colonies from mustard fields to fruit blossoms and then to sunflower or forest flows.

Income from mauri palan varies widely with location, species and management, so figures should be treated as indicative rather than fixed. Village studies have found honey sales contributing on the order of one-sixth of total household income for beekeeping families in parts of western Nepal, while commercial operators in Chitwan report modest but reliable profit per hive. The economics improve sharply for keepers who add value through branding, unifloral labelling or by tapping the premium wild-honey and mad-honey market.

Nepal's honey exports are small and volatile relative to production. Trade data show natural-honey exports of roughly US$165,000 in 2022, down about 27 percent from around US$228,000 in 2021, with buyers concentrated in a handful of markets such as Australia, the United States and Japan. The Trade and Export Promotion Centre (TEPC) has also listed the United Kingdom, the Republic of Korea, Germany, Hong Kong and Poland among potential markets. Much of Nepal's honey, however, is consumed domestically or exported informally, and India is a source of imported honey rather than a major buyer.

The single biggest formal barrier is access to the European Union. Since 2008 Nepal has effectively been unable to export honey and other animal-origin products to the EU because it is not on the EU's list of approved third countries. Listing requires a functioning national Residue Monitoring Plan (RMP) able to test honey for residues of veterinary drugs, pesticides and heavy metals, backed by an accredited laboratory and traceability system that Nepal has struggled to put fully in place.

Two further problems compound the residue issue. First, heavy use of agricultural pesticides in some areas raises the risk of contaminated honey, and premium markets enforce near-zero tolerance for such residues. Second, the EU legally defines honey as the product of Apis mellifera only, which excludes honey from Nepal's native bees, including the celebrated cliff honey of Apis laboriosa. Overcoming these hurdles, through better residue monitoring, cleaner production and certification, is central to Nepal's ambition of turning its honey into a higher-value export.