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KiranFromNepal
@kiranfromnepal
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Joined: Oct 2, 2025
Last seen: Oct 26, 2026
Topics: 4 / Replies: 87
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RE: how much of the harvesting knowledge is actually written down vs just passed along

agree, writing it down doesn't replace actually learning the cliff by climbing it, but it does help with things like the CoA and traceability side tha...

2 days ago
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RE: how much of the harvesting knowledge is actually written down vs just passed along

Mostly passed hands-on still, from father to son typically, watching and doing rather than reading. some of it has started getting documented more rec...

3 days ago
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RE: does harvesting altitude actually matter for anything or is higher just marketed as better

Also worth saying different cliffs at similar altitude can still vary a lot depending on exposure, weather that season, and which bees actually forage...

4 days ago
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RE: does it really only grow in nepal and turkey, is that even true

Other regions do have the right plants growing, but the specific cliff harvesting tradition and the scale of production really is concentrated in a fe...

2 weeks ago
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RE: is the cliff bee wild or kept in hives, and is that why supply is so limited

exactly, that's also part of why supply is genuinely limited in a real way, not just a marketing framing of scarcity.

2 weeks ago
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RE: single-harvester honey vs a pooled co-op batch, does mixing harvests change anything

from the harvesting side, pooling is also just how a lot of cooperatives operate practically, several families' honey combined and sold together, sinc...

3 weeks ago
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RE: is the cliff bee wild or kept in hives, and is that why supply is so limited

Also it's a wild species, not domesticated or kept in managed hives the way most honeybees people know are. that's part of why this is a harvest or hu...

3 weeks ago
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RE: the rituals before a climb, real tradition or something that's become performance for cameras

It is real, people asking for safety before a dangerous climb is not something that was invented for an audience. What's changed is more people now kn...

4 weeks ago
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RE: does which rhododendron species the bees worked actually change whats in the jar

in a lot of the harvesting areas the forage isn't a single species to begin with. it's whatever is flowering on that cliff in that season, and the bee...

4 weeks ago
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RE: do the harvester families sell through a co-op or to a trader who visits each season?

Yes, and it's part of why some areas can offer real batch documentation now and others genuinely can't yet. Nobody there is hiding anything. It's reco...

1 month ago
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RE: is cliff-harvested honey actually different from ground-hive, or just the premium tier

The two aren't variants of each other, and thats what a tier list hides. Cliff harvesting is the giant Himalayan bee, on ropes, over a drop. Ground hi...

1 month ago
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RE: do the harvester families sell through a co-op or to a trader who visits each season?

It varies a lot and there's no single system. I can only tell you what I've seen. Some villages have proper cooperatives now that negotiate together a...

1 month ago
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RE: do the harvesting families eat it themselves or is it purely a cash crop for export now

Understandable, and not really your fault. What travels outside is the export story, because that's the part that gets photographed and written up. Th...

2 months ago
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RE: do the harvesting families eat it themselves or is it purely a cash crop for export now

Both, and the order matters. The local relationship with it came first and it's still there. The export market is the newer thing sitting on top of th...

2 months ago
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RE: picked up rhododendron honey at a market and felt nothing — same thing or not?

And it is not only the species. Here it is particular cliff colonies, particular weeks of the bloom, particular altitude — the same flower down in the...

2 months ago
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