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Xiong Yang

Thousands of bees buzz in a frenzy, throwing themselves at a man in a protective suit. Clinging to a rope ladder suspended over a cliff, the harvester struggles to balance with every reach towards the bees’ hive.
Armed with a long-handled knife, he slices away the outer sections rich with ripe honey, leaving the centre and bottom intact so the larvae inside can survive to sustain the colony.
“Because the ladder swings so much, cutting the comb and lowering it safely is a gruelling test that can drag on for hours,” says Liu Kai, the founder of Honey On Road, a brand that sources speciality honeys from China’s Yunnan province.
He first encountered cliff honey harvesting in a part of Yunnan near the China-Myanmar border in 2018. At the time, even most locals had no idea the perilous tradition existed. It was practised mostly unseen in the mountain forests.

Liu first arrived in Yunnan while working on rural revitalisation projects. His curiosity about cliff honey grew into an obsession, shaped by the province’s geography, biodiversity and generations of knowledge.
It took him five years and countless expeditions across Yunnan to feel like he was starting to understand Chinese honey. The more he travelled, the less honey resembled the cloying syrup he was used to buying from supermarkets.
Some honeys were intensely earthy or herbal. One carried an almost medicinal bitterness. Another, produced by stingless bees, surprised tasters with its fermented acidity. Even the same species of bee could produce different honey depending on the altitude, season and surrounding vegetation.
“Yunnan is the best place in China for sourcing honey,” Liu says. “It boasts a rich diversity of bee species, an abundant variety of flowers and a massive altitudinal span.”
When Liu first encountered a bitter variety he later named Shuyu, local harvesters were eager to get rid of it because it did not fit in with the conventional expectation that honey is sweet. That same honey would eventually become a favourite among food professionals.

How chefs are embracing natural honey
Liu realised the problem was not the honey, but the lack of a vocabulary to describe the wide spectrum of sensory experiences that it affords. Unlike wine or speciality coffee, there was almost no language to talk about honey beyond the simplicity of sweetness.
He decided to invite chefs, mixologists, baristas and chocolate makers to taste the wild honeys he sourced, together building a shared lexicon and treating honey as a product informed by terroir. Chinese honey was far more diverse than most had imagined.
Professional chefs were among the first to embrace wild Chinese honeys. At one-Michelin-star restaurant Ling Long in Shanghai, Jason Liu serves a dessert showcasing three distinct Chinese honeys: sour honey from Yunnan, black honey from Xinjiang and golden cliff honey from Qinghai.
“I found them through travels and conversations with local beekeepers across China,” the chef says. “I wanted to show the diversity of Chinese honey, not just a single honey.”

Each honey appears in a different form. The sour honey flavours an airy sponge cake, the cliff honey forms part of its flowing centre and the black honey provides a crisp finishing layer. The dessert is served atop a beeswax plate surrounded by flowers, alongside a real beehive accompanied by recordings of buzzing bees.
Pastry chef Friso Hsiao approaches honey with equal curiosity at his dessert counter De Artan in Shanghai, where he pairs sour honey from stingless bees with lunjiaogao, a fermented rice cake from Shunde in China’s Guangdong province.
“The sour honey carries notes of tropical fruit,” Hsiao says. “Because lunjiaogao is fermented, matching the two coaxes out a subtle aroma of ripe pineapple.” Rather than overpowering the dessert with sweetness, the honey extends its fermentation-driven flavours.
Hsiao recently launched a summer menu showcasing different honeys. The experience begins with appetisers featuring honeys from bee species native to Italy. Each dessert spotlights a native Chinese bee species. The honey is first drizzled onto guests’ hands for tasting on its own, accompanied by cards detailing its provenance.

For coffee and tea expert Tan Xiying, the appeal of natural Chinese honey lies in its variance – as opposed to commercial honey, which producers strive to make consistent.
“Sometimes the change is incredibly delicate,” Tan says. “When the sweet-and-sour balance shifts between batches, I can fine-tune the flavour profile accordingly.”
That philosophy shaped Seedling, a drink blending tea, rhubarb and sour honey that Tan created for the 2025 World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship after travelling to Lancang in Yunnan to harvest wild sour honey herself.
“You have to understand where the flavour comes from and why it occurs,” Tan says. “Only then can you really pique others’ curiosity.”

Chinese craft chocolate makers have equally found joy in the ever-changing batches. When the team behind independent bean-to-bar brand Nibbo first sampled Liu Kai’s wild honeys, they discovered bright acidity and lingering bitterness that conventional honey often lacked.
The brand’s research kitchen spent months reformulating its chocolate recipes to preserve subtle characteristics, which can easily be overwhelmed by sweetness.
“The honey also contains active enzymes,” says Wang Tong, who oversees Nibbo’s product and branding. “It continues to ferment inside the jar, so the flavour changes over time.”
Even the packaging became part of the brand’s attempt to educate consumers. The wrappers introduce the bee species, habitats and harvesting traditions behind each honey varietal used.

To these chefs, drinkmakers and chocolatiers, variations become a strength rather than a flaw.
China is home to various native honeybee species, including the eastern honeybee – the cornerstone of traditional Chinese beekeeping – and the Himalayan giant honeybee, which produces the famous cliff honey. Honey production extends beyond true honeybees to stingless bees, which yield a naturally sour honey.
The bitterness of some honeys reflects the foraging routes of the bees that make them, through forests rich in Chinese goldthread and other medicinal plants. The acidity of stingless bee honey develops through microbes that continue working even after the honey is harvested.
“We use honey as a medium to help people understand the broader ecosystem,” says Jian Mengyao, general manager of the wild honey company Qianhuami. “The ecology inside a beehive tells you what’s happening outside.”
Problems facing the industry
That delicate ecological balance has been under threat for decades, as China’s native pollinators face various pressures.
The introduction of Italian honeybees in the early 20th century transformed commercial beekeeping across China. Better suited to industrial honey production, the imported bees gradually displaced native species through competition for food, disease transmission and hive robbing, pushing native populations into isolated pockets where the Italian species struggled to adapt. Modern agriculture has compounded the pressure.
Lu Chensheng is a professor in the College of Resources and Environment at Southwest University in Chongqing and a former professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. He has spent years studying the invisible effects of pesticides and industrial pollutants on pollinators.
When Lu conducted field research in China in 2019, he encountered beekeepers describing a phenomenon known as paofeng – when entire colonies suddenly abandon healthy hives.
“The public notices acute poisoning events, when bees die en masse in a rapeseed field,” he says. “But abnormal colony desertion is a much more insidious and widespread crisis.”
That concern is increasingly shared by businesses built around wild honey. For Jian, conservation cannot rely on charitable acts alone. The bees need to become economically valuable.
Her company provides free beehives to villagers, then purchases the honey. The profits from this help fund training programmes that encourage less destructive harvesting methods.
“In the past, bees were simply part of the ecosystem,” Jian says. “Today, people often treat them purely as a business.”
Liu Kai hopes to change that. As he introduces chefs and everyday consumers to unfamiliar honeys, every new buyer creates another reason for someone in the mountains to preserve native habitats rather than replace them with higher-yield alternatives.

A sour reception
Despite growing enthusiasm in professional kitchens, convincing ordinary consumers remains difficult.
Guan Rui, a Yunnan native and founder of the honey brand Yu Lin Cun, began supplying establishments such as Ling Long without knowing the Shanghai restaurant’s stellar culinary status. Despite spending over a decade selling honey across China, he still battles scepticism from everyday buyers.
“Sour honey is still a niche product,” Guan says. “Some customers completely misunderstand it, even accusing us of watering it down.” Others used to the unwavering sweetness of industrial honey struggle with the natural shifts of the wild.
“I just had a customer file a complaint saying their second purchase tasted different from their first,” Guan sighs. “But there are thousands of different plants in the mountains depending on the season. Of course it changes.”
In an era when speciality coffee celebrates single origins and natural wine embraces vintage differences, China’s native honeys offer something similarly rooted in location. The challenge lies in persuading more people that inconsistency is not a defect, but evidence of living nature.
When asked about the sustainability of wild harvesting, Guan remains pragmatic. “The cliffs are vast, and many remain beyond human reach. We are very far from hitting a production bottleneck.”

According to researcher Lu, the greater threat lies elsewhere. As agriculture pushes further into Yunnan’s forests and chemical use continues to reshape surrounding landscapes, even remote bee populations cannot remain entirely insulated.
“Managed beekeeping might become unsustainable under heavy chemical pressure,” Lu warns. “The wild bees foraging in remote mountain forests might represent the last glimmer of hope for China’s pollinators.”
For Liu Kai, that is why every tasting matters. The hope is not simply that people discover a better honey. It is that, in learning to appreciate the mesmerising diversity inside the jar, they also begin to value the landscapes and the bees that made it possible.


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Food and Drinks

Bitter, earthy, herbal: why wild Chinese honey has chefs buzzing with excitement

A selection of wild honeys from Honey On Road, a brand that sources the sticky substance from China’s Yunnan province. Its founder, Liu Kai, is on a mission to educate Chinese consumers about natural honey and the bees and landscapes that produce it. Photo: Liu Kai

Liu Kai is the founder of Honey On Road, a brand that sources speciality honeys from China’s Yunnan province. Photo: Liu Kai

A honey-themed dessert at one-Michelin-star restaurant Ling Long in Shanghai showcases three distinct Chinese honeys: sour honey from Yunnan, black honey from Xinjiang and golden cliff honey from Qinghai. Photo: Ling Long

Jason Liu of one-Michelin-star Ling Long in Shanghai was among the first chefs in China to embrace natural Chinese honey. Photo: Ling Long

At De Artan in Shanghai, pastry chef Friso Hsiao pairs naturally sour honey from stingless bees with lunjiaogao, a fermented rice cake from Shunde in China’s Guangdong province. Photo: De Artan

Tan Xiying is the tea and coffee expert behind the wild-honey-infused drink Seedling. Photo: Tan Xiying

Nibbo’s wild honey collection features Liu Kai’s honeys sourced from China’s Yunnan province. Photo: Nibbo

Liu Kai wears a beekeeper uniform as he prepares to check on hives. Photo: Liu Kai

Yu Lin Cun founder Guan Rui (left) holds a honeycomb with his partner, Chen Rui. Photo: Yu Lin Cun

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Liu Xin, chef-owner of Hong 0871, holds a basket of freshly harvested ganbajun. Photo: Evelyn Chen

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Lifestyle

Food & Drink

Wild natural honey from Yunnan province and beyond is becoming a favourite among food professionals looking for flavours besides sweet


Wild natural honey from Yunnan province and beyond is becoming a favourite among food professionals looking for flavours besides sweet.


China

Chinese culture

Bitter, earthy, herbal: why wild Chinese honey has chefs buzzing with excitement

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Wild natural honey from Yunnan province and beyond is becoming a favourite among food professionals looking for flavours besides sweet

Wild natural honey from Yunnan province and beyond is becoming a favourite among food professionals looking for flavours besides sweet