Wild honey holds cultural significance far beyond its value as a food source in many honey hunting societies. The Hadza people of Tanzania obtain nearly 15% of their annual calories from wild honey, making it their most preferred food and a central element in courtship rituals and marriage proposals. In India's Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, the seasonal honey harvest by Kurumba tribespeople involves sacred ceremonies and strict harvesting protocols believed to ensure bee colonies will return the following year. Beyond cultural traditions, wild honey often contains distinct medicinal properties absent in commercial honey due to the diverse forage available to wild bees, with scientific analysis confirming higher antioxidant properties and unique phytochemical profiles. Today, traditional honey hunting faces multiple threatsfrom deforestation destroying habitat to climate change disrupting flowering seasons to competition from commercial beekeeping. Conservation efforts increasingly recognize traditional honey hunters as crucial stakeholders in forest preservation, with projects in countries like Indonesia and Ethiopia developing sustainable harvesting certification programs that support both cultural practices and bee conservation. These initiatives reflect growing recognition that traditional ecological knowledge about wild bees represents valuable expertise for understanding pollinator health in an era of global insect decline. Shutdown123