Honey collection in the forest

In the KarianChola Trek, we heard a loud voice of elephant. Our guides babu and Murugesh alerted us, checked the presence of the elephants on our trial. The voice came from left side of the trial. They said we might get into trouble if we go in this trial and they found alternate trial on the right side. We had already covered 5kms of the 7kms trail.

In the alternate trial, Murugesh sensed the honey bees on a tree. There are two varieties of honey namely "Kurunthen" - small honey bees build the honey comb at the openings of the bottom of the tree and "Marathen" - big honey bees build on the top branches of the tree. He identified the tree, where the Kurunthen honey bees built the honey comb. He used his aruval, cleared the access of the opening in the bottom of the tree.He inserted his hands, got the honey comb. Honey bees were small, didn't bite him.
Here is the close picture of the honey bee comb.
we all got our share of tasty, pure honey direct from the honey comb :) It was tasty :) It was our first experience to collect honey and drink directly from the honey comb. That too in the forest!

We enjoyed it :)
You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .