FAQs

Honey as a consumable product has multiple health benefits and medicinal properties. These include aiding the nursing of wounds and burns, improving heart health, building immunity through nutrient content and is an overall traditional remedy adopted by indigenous communities to treat many aliments.  

The health benefits for different types of honey are listed below:  

Nilgiri Sweet Honey:  This healthy delicacy has been used by Indigenous communities for centuries to prevent cough and cold while building immunity.  

Pollen Honey: This honey is naturally rich in pollen, which is believed to have a multitude of benefits including for allergies, heart, and liver function. 

Jamun Honey: Naturally bitter in taste, this wild honey is sourced from bees that feed on flowers of the Black Jamun (Syzigium cumini) tree. It is believed that the bees impart the benefits of jamun, such as blood sugar regulation, into this honey. 

Cinnamon Honey: Cinnamon is believed to have antiviral, antibacterial, and pain relief properties.  

Ginger Honey: Ginger is believed to address indigestion, throat ache, nausea, or migraines. 

Nutmeg Honey: Nutmeg is believed to have pain relieving and detoxification properties and is traditionally used to aid digestion. 

Thyme Honey: This wild honey is infused with homegrown thyme, an herb believed to be rich in vitamins C and A, with benefits for stomach, digestion, and mood. 

Rosemary Honey: This wild honey is infused with homegrown rosemary, an herb traditionally cherished for its anti-inflammatory properties, improvement of blood circulation, and benefits for hair.  

Cardamom Honey: Cardamom is believed to reduce blood pressure, increase circulation, and be rich in antioxidants. 

Saffron Honey: Saffron is lauded as a luxury for not only its distinct taste but also its antioxidant properties. 

Pepper Honey: Pepper is believed to aid digestion and throat ache.

Last Forest honey is sourced straight out of wild beehives tucked away in forests within neighbouring regions.

The honey is naturally and sustainably collected directly by honey hunters who trudge on tall cliffs in search of suitable extraction sources. 

After paying obeisance to the local deity, the men set out into the forest, armed with the tools of their trade – rope, machetes and baskets to collect the honey. They are especially adept at extracting honey from the hives hidden among the cliffs that soar hundreds of feet into the sky. The rope fastened, the designated climber descends into the depths of the cliff, seeking the hives.

Once he finds a rich source of honey, swinging precariously on the rope ladder, he builds a smoker to agitate the bees into abandoning the hive, taking care not to destroy any of the bees. Blinded by smoke and swarmed by angry bees, he extracts the honeycomb and begins his long climb up. 

Once the bees have fled the hives temporarily, the honey hunters go on to extract the honey, and beeswax from the combs.  

There are many incentives of purchasing wild honey in contrast from regular cultured honey such as it being sustainably collected and sourced from wildflowers.

The scope of foraging for the bees is much larger in comparison to cultured bees, as the areas and locations are widespread and not limited geographically. The advantage of foraging from different wild flowering species is that the pollen content is much higher, and it is found that the nutritional value in wild honey is higher.

Wild honey is known for its medicinal properties as well.  The unique nature of wild unprocessed, raw and untampered honey makes it all the more special and rarer, putting it on the forefront of honey types.  

Last Forest honey is not officially organically certified but is registered under PGS Wild, an accreditation which primarily caters to wild produce. 

We have opted for PGS Wild and not an organic certification because our honey is collected from different regions and farms, who may not necessarily follow organic practices resulting in wild produce harvested from inorganic regions.

Organic certifications are an often a tedious process to acquire, although Last Forest is not certified on paper it is as organic as it can get.  

No additional sugar is added to the honey, the quality of the honey produces the extra sweetness in it.  

Honey is a multipurpose condiment which can be malleable according to your needs. It has an array of functions ranging from consumable, medicinal, and decoratable uses.

It can be used as a natural sweetener, and spread over breads, dosas, rotis, and idlies as well as in baking and decorative desserts.

It can be applied as a chemically free face pack, hair removal product, and used to nurse cuts and burns.

It has many traditional medicinal uses adopted by Adivasi communities; it has aruvedic properties as well.  Honey is an anti-flammatory and antioxidant and is well known to cure colds and sore throats when mixed in concoctions.

Honey is a unique creation and can be used innovatively in whatever way possible and has no ends to its functions.   

Honey does not expire and can enjoyed for years to come. It does not have an expiry date if it is cared and stored for properly according to instructions.  Unfiltered honey ensures that most of the necessary nutrients are retained throughout the period of consumption as honey contains numerous vitamins and enzymes.  Most often the organisms which can spoil food do not survive in honey. The magical reason for the longevity of honey lies in its biological make up as the sugar and low pH content constitute its lifespan.  

Precautions: 

Do not directly refrigerate and heat honey. 

Do not use a wet spoon or your finger when taking it out of its bottle. 

Do not store honey in a plastic container instead use a glass bottle.  

While Last Forest remains on the pricier side in contrast to other honey brands, the cost of the product has been evaluated carefully and deserves the value it stands for.

Last Forest honey is completely natural, unprocessed, raw, wild, unadulterated and sustainably sourced unlike other honeys which may be cheaper due to their cultured and adulterated properties. The pricing has been set after much deliberation and careful consideration as there are many variables affecting its procurement.

The honey is known to be collected from various regions, and therefore requires honey hunters to travel to these collection sites for a reasonable number of days. Logistical, food, daily wage, travel and other such expenses influences the cost.

We must invest in our labelling, procuring, equipment/machinery, marketing and social media, filtration, and other such procedural costs which add up to the total giving our honey its MRP. 

As a social enterprise who make profit through the market, we still have the responsibility of relaying back our monetary resources to the communities to ensure sustainability of their livelihoods.  

Our honey collection processes are sustainable because they do not damage the environment, beehives, bee colonies, or forests, but instead help in stewarding nature and its resources responsibly and consciously.

Last forest believes in values such as leaving natural habitats better off than when they were first found, and in leaving a sustainable and measurable impact behind. 

The process undertaken when collecting honey ensures that it abides by certain boundaries and parameters.  Such as the smoking of beehives ensures that bees are kept safe.

Last forest does not externally input any chemicals or impurities into their products especially honey which is collected in its rawest and purest essence. The process of filtration is consciously practised while attempting to retain the honey’s rawest character.

The influence that Last Forest has had on local communities, especially in relation to indigenous women is immeasurable, they have always believed in empowering people through the work they do. This impact is seen as a socially sustainable footprint.