Honey hunters of Blue Mountains

The Honey & Bee Museum’ is a novel project at Ooty by the NGO, Keystone Foundation. It depicts information on indigenous honey bees and traditional indigenous tribal people who harvest them. It also has a children’s activity room and a small knowledge resource unit on bees, environment and people. The Bee Museum is first of its kind focusing on traditional knowledge and practices. The museum aims to be a vibrant space with live demonstration units of bees, specimens and tools – both traditional and modern used in beekeeping and honey gathering.

Many of my friends had gone to ooty and none knew there was a bee museum there. If you go there, they play a 20 min documentry of how honey is collected and everything you would like to know abt bees.  We bought bitter medicinal honey. It is really tasty and also bitter at the same time, and lots of products made from bees wax like soaps and candles.

You can visit the Honey and Bee Museum of Keystone foundation in Ooty. Watch the spectacular documentary on ‘Honey hunters of Blue Mountains’ that captures the honey harvest of Kurumba tribes.

The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in South India harbours rare wild bees and honey combs of the rock bee Apis dorsata are a common sight.


The Kurumba tribals of the Nilgiris earn a living by harvesting this honey; hectic activity usually occurring just before the monsoons. The tribals scale steep precipices to collect honey, braving bee storms, spiders and other unknown challenges. This film by Riverbanks Studios captures effectively the bond between the tribals and nature.