Indonesia Honey

Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago: 17,000 islands spanning a distance greater than the continental United States, straddling the equator between two oceans, holding the third-largest tropical forest on earth. The honeys those forests produce are unlike anything that reaches the international market, and the reason is structural. The dominant species, Apis dorsata, builds open nests in the crowns of emergent trees, absconds when disturbed, and will not tolerate a box. Every gram arrives by a climber from a wild colony. Indonesia tracked 18,430 liters of forest honey in 2024 while its people consumed somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 tons the same year – importing the rest from Thailand, Argentina, and Vietnam. The forests hold far more than the market has learned to reach.

Indonesia holds five wild honeybee species. Beyond Apis dorsata, Apis cerana nests in cavities and yields to box management but produces far less per colony. Apis florea, the dwarf honey bee – called tawon lanceng in Java – occupies exposed low nests and produces small quantities. The stingless bees of the Meliponini tribe, collectively kelulut or klanceng by region, produce the sour, resin-inflected madu kelulut now growing as a commercial category under pesantren cultivation programs. Apis mellifera, introduced by Dutch colonial agents in 1841, runs the managed commercial farms. The production ceiling exists because the species with the highest yield per colony – Apis dorsata – is the one that cannot be farmed.

Indonesia has no single dominant forage plant at the national level. Each island system generates its own honey identity from its own forest. In Riau and Kalimantan the sialang tree (Koompassia excelsa) serves as both the preferred nesting site of Apis dorsata – its smooth, soaring trunk reaching 88 meters deters predators – and a protected species under the adat tenure systems of communities like the Petalangan, who prohibit felling it as long as bees nest there. In Bangka Tengah the pelawan (Tristaniopsis merguensis), a tree entirely absent from Java, produces a bitter nectar that gives Madu Pelawan its flavor and, increasingly, its legal identity: the village of Namang was pursuing geographic indication registration for Madu Pelawan with DJKI and JICA support as of July 2024, the first named forest honey origin in Indonesia to do so. In Danau Sentarum the annual flood-and-flower cycle of a 132,000-hectare freshwater wetland drives a honey calendar tied to the sequential blooming of putat, emasung, and taun. In Java the kapuk randu (Ceiba pentandra), once the dominant commercial forage plant for Apis mellifera hives, has declined to roughly eleven percent of its former cultivated area since the 1980s as land use shifted – the single largest structural change to the commercial honey industry in the country’s recent history.

The harvest traditions that have grown around Apis dorsata reach well beyond informal practice. The menumbai ceremony of the Petalangan people of Riau, declared a national intangible cultural heritage, requires a specialist – the juagan tuo – who addresses the colony in pantun verse before cutting into the comb. Parallel systems operate across Kalimantan, Aceh, and Nusa Tenggara Timur, each with named roles, tools, and prohibitions. These traditions function as governance systems: setting harvest timing, preventing overharvesting, and maintaining the relationship with the colony that makes next season’s harvest possible.

The ceremony performed in darkness without protective gear, and four other traditions governing the harvest

The menumbai ceremony is performed at night, in complete darkness, without modern protective gear. The juagan tuo addresses the colony in alternating pantun verse before cutting into the comb, personifying the bees as a beautiful girl and asking her permission. The specific pantun text, the specialist title, and the dedicated tools -- tunam, timbo, ubo, semangket -- were documented in full in Indonesiana Vol. 14 (Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan). The named specialist role and the oral literature that transmits it are internal evidence of centuries of continuous practice.

The muar ceremony of Ketapang, Kalimantan Barat, uses a bamboo ladder called jatak and a spoken prayer for safety -- timang madu -- as the harvester descends from the colony. In Aceh the BPNB documented the Buloh Seuma community's relationship with the reubek tree and its colonies in a 2022 monograph, framing the harvest as a system of obligations to a forest understood to hold power the harvester must acknowledge. In Nusa Tenggara Timur the Bijoba Sonav poem in the Dhawan language records bee abundance as a sign of regional prosperity; the Dhawan practice includes a ritual call to invite bees to inhabit trees before the harvest begins.

The prohibitions embedded in these traditions -- on when trees may be felled, which colonies may be harvested, what portion must remain -- are the operational mechanisms that prevent colonies from absconding and ensure a viable harvest the following season. The adat tenure systems protecting sialang trees in Riau and Kalimantan almost certainly predate the colonial period.

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The Islamic framework inside which most Indonesian honey culture operates adds a second governance layer. Honey’s grounding in Surah An-Nahl – created by divine instruction to the bee – makes it a cornerstone of Thibbun Nabawi, the Prophetic medicine tradition organizing health practice for many Indonesian Muslim families. The same grounding has made stingless bee cultivation a natural fit for the approximately 26,000 pesantren across Indonesia.

The Sandro Madu of Sumbawa and how Bank Indonesia brought kelulut hives to Islamic boarding schools

The Sandro Madu is an Islamic healer whose practice centers on Sumbawa forest honey as a therapeutic material. The authority is not from certification but from a framework the patient shares: a honey whose character is established by Quranic reference does not require laboratory validation to establish credibility. This is the Thibbun Nabawi logic in its clearest institutional expression, and it is why Sumbawa honey carries a national identity that transcends any single production region.

Bank Indonesia has funded kelulut programs at pesantren as a rural economic development model, piloted at institutions in Bengkulu, Sulawesi Selatan, and Nusa Tenggara Barat. The University of Indonesia research team that developed the program described it as a model for pesantren economic independence -- kemandirian pesantren -- that also sustains pollination ecology wherever the schools operate. The theological logic that makes honey central to Indonesian Muslim health culture turns out to be the same logic that makes a boarding school apiary a coherent economic project.

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The documentation and market infrastructure for Indonesian forest honey concentrates around two institutions. JMHI (Jaringan Madu Hutan Indonesia), with its national secretariat at Yayasan Riak Bumi in Pontianak, has built traceable supply chains for Apis dorsata producers across the archipelago since 2000. Desa Namang in Bangka Tengah is the other significant pole: a village that enacted its own forest protection regulation in 2008 and was working toward a geographic indication for Madu Pelawan Namang in 2024. Both institutions follow the same logic: named place, documented stewardship, verifiable identity.

The 2007 certification that made Danau Sentarum the first organic-certified forest honey in Indonesia

In 2007 the APDS cooperative (Asosiasi Periau Danau Sentarum) in Kapuas Hulu received BIOCert organic certification -- the first ever issued to an Indonesian forest honey producer. The certification was presented at a Ministry of Forestry ceremony by the minister himself. The 28,000-hectare periau (honey forest) under APDS management represents the most documented community-managed forest honey system in the country, and it established the model that Desa Namang is now pursuing through the geographic indication system.

Desa Namang enacted its own Perdes protecting the Hutan Pelawan in 2008, received the Adi Karya Pangan Nusantara award in 2013, and was working with Kemenkumham and JICA toward a geographic indication for Madu Pelawan Namang in 2024 -- the first named forest honey origin in Indonesia to pursue formal geographic protection. The JICA technical assistance was coordinated through Kanwil Kemenkumham Kepulauan Bangka Belitung. The way to give Indonesian forest honey a durable market identity is to attach it to a named place with documented stewardship, not to extract it from a forest with no named owner.

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