A Symphony Of Gold In The Tree-Carpeted Hills Of Nagaland

Honey can be sour and even bitter...

This fortuitous revelation came to me on a recent trip to Nagaland but not before a natty sequence.

Puncturing the opaque, viscose surface of a bottled honey with a bamboo ice-cream stick, Neilazono Terhuja, Team Leader, Nagaland Beekeeping and Honey Mission (NBHM), held up a scoop of honey to match the hue with the soft afternoon sun in Kohima. Terhuja asked me to regard, "The colour and then the aroma, texture and taste".

A honeyed rendezvous.

Indeed the bottle's content of Khusomi honey, from Apis Cerana (the eastern honey bee or Asiatic honey bee), had a distinguished taste than the store-shelf so-called honey. Khusomi honey was in the generic spectrum of sweetness, albeit elevated, being more creamy with a titch sour note. Incidentally, a morsel of natural honeycomb sampled at Shoixe stall of Zunheboto district tested the threshold of saccharine intake to the fullest.

Next in the flow was Rock bee honey gleaned by wild honey bees (Apis dorsata/labariosa) which has a slightly more unsullied gustatory appeal. The surprise surfaced with the produce of stingless bee (Trigona/Melipona) species - the Khutsami (Phek District) is a light caramel runny liquid with sharp sourness on first contact and true to the sour-bitter plot in the aftertaste.

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I learnt that this particular type of honey has medicinal properties providing cure against cough, allergies, burns ulcers and the likes. Apparently, well-aged stingless honey is an antidote to snakebite!

A walkabout revealed that honey from Old Jalukie village of Pren District, which rears only stingless has a fruity bitterness because these bees feed majorly on pineapples, offerings from Monyakshu village, Mon District that are predominantly cardamom honey. Nerhema village, Kohima, nurtures the most amount of bees in all and New Vongti, Kiphire, makes the best use of its superior beeswax. No reason not to consider Yangching (Longleng), Chendang (Tuensang), Longla (Wokha), Bade (Chumukedima), inter alia for a honeyed rendezvous.

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Nzanbemo K. Lotha, the NBHM Nodal Officer remarked that during end December-January, when Leucosceptrum canum is most prevalent in large scale honey producing districts like Kohima, Zunheboto, Phek and Tuensang, the honey produced is so dark and bitter that it's not preferred for consumption.

He also broached, on occasion of the 2nd Nagaland Honey Bee day being celebrated as part of the 20th Hornbill Music Festival, that for the very first time they have introduced a product procured from the little bee aka red/black dwarf honey bee (Apis Florea/Andreniformis), a species so rare that only four out of the inhabitant seven/eight known sub-species could be identified.

Two Shoixe ladies of Zunheboto district with honeycomb.

Nagaland honey is its own intangible tourist destination.

By and large, Nagaland honey, which demands its own dedicated modifier - so much so that it should as well be tagged with a Geographical Indication (GI) along with Naga Mircha, Chakshesang Shawl and Naga Tree Tomato (Naga cucumber is waitlisted) - retains its idiosyncrasies owing to its specific geo-climatic conditioning: Tall hills with almost zero water and air pollution.

Owing to the pristine nature of its cultivation practices and endemic diversity of its feral flora, it exhibits subtle as well drastic facets depending on the bouquet of the foraging resources (sometimes amounting to 20,000 varieties of herbs and blossoms), hive management and honey extraction skill of the beekeepers and perhaps also on the psychological disposition of the bees themselves.

As a thumb rule the longer you store natural honey the sweeter it gets except the one from stingless bees which shores up sourness with time. Owing to the traditional culture of non-organised farming using only natural fertilizers - no pesticides/insecticides, herbicides or growth enhancement chemicals ever being used - the honey bottled without preservatives, pasteurisation, application of heat or any processing, is just the way bees plastered it with their wax sealant.

Technically, when honey is squeezed out they use a Muslin cloth, to segregate the pollen, otherwise, it is obtained via an extractor. Honey bottled in this manner preserves organically occurring active nutrients, immuno and energy boosters, enzymes like glucose oxidase, thus making it remedial with antimicrobial and antibacterial properties. One may very well consider Naga honey to cognate with Tupelo, Ikaria, Manuka, Royal Jelly, and Nigerian Jungle honey in its medicinal scope. If you are scheduling your Nagaland visit to pick up up fresh produce then you might note that the peak harvest period in general is December-January and May through July.

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The local beekeepers.

Every tribal village household here is full of potential beekeepers. One such native Natwar Thakkar had taken the initiative to formalise this potential acumen with a scientific temperament at Gandhi Ashram in the 1960s at Chuchuyimlang village in Mokokchung District. It was only while documenting the past that NBHM, which was established in 2007, that people came to know about him.

This holistic mission, over the last 12 years, has forged a remarkable growth both in terms of volume and quality of Nagaland honey. While maintaining a non-interference policy - about 40% (i.e 60% is domesticated rearing), they provide technical support - bee-boxes, appurtenances, sensitising workshops, hygiene-guidelines, common facility centre, and the such to the bee-breeders.

They are specifically encouraged to grow nectar-producing plants, shrubs and trees and most importantly to maintain product fidelity - never to employ any direct or allied illegal or unfair means to impact the production. Incidentally, the mission has been training counterparts in Manipur, Assam, Mizoram and AP and might very well be instrumental in the setting-up of Meghalaya's Honey Development Centre, the first of its kind in North-East. An inside source sighed that a similar initiative was mooted for Nagaland long back but was caged by policy.

Pure medicine, in every form.

With a natural superfood in proximal abundance, Naga's stick to their honey like there is no tomorrow. "We Nagas love our honey. In the villages, they buy in kilograms - 10/20 kgs at a time. Often they'll even pay an advance of Rs 20-30 thousand to the cultivators to ensure their stock", iterated Bokhale Chikhe, another NBHM team leader.

Continuing in her enthusiasm, she explained "No matter how much honey we produce there will always be buyers. Most of the village apiculturists sell their products from their make-shift shack without even any need to reach the nearest market." She further added, "The tribals love the bees - they have started recognising that hovering bee-swarm means a bumper harvest."

Darkness begins to descend and we ask Chikhe what does honey signify for the people of Nagaland. Unwrapping her fingers from a honey-lemon tea-cup, she puts them up, which if brought together could form a globe and said out loud, "It's medicine."

Sudipto Mullick is a freelance writer based in Kolkata.