The Honey Collector

In the bush you can't go down to the sweet shop and buy a bar of chocolate for your sugar fix, things are a little more complicated and a lot more painful! We drove past a tree whilst on Safari which had been marked and the trackers asked us to stop for a few minutes so they could collect this seasons batch of honey, an interesting operation to witness!

Mwaipasi, the elder tracker and a former honey collector was eager to get on with the task, lighting a small fire and generating some smoke to subdue the colony. He then promptly stuck his arm down the hole without a care in the world and started extracting the honeycomb. He was covered, as you can see, by bees which swarmed everywhere and stung him a total of 16 times, the penalty for a handful of honey.

I think I prefer the sweet shop method, but the honey was quite superb!

2 Comments

neil mcveigh on October 10, 2014 at 3:42 am

Simon dis-appointed you didn't have a go at this.
As "top gun"you should lead from the front!
neil

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- Simon Clode on October 10, 2014 at 3:58 pm
  
  I did try, but they were fed up of me always doing the job and getting the best load of honey, they pushed me aside!
  
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