Toxic wild honey from rhododendron nectar keeps sickening Nepali honey-hunters
Pokharel P, Gautam A, Bhattarai U
Ethnobotany
That rhododendron blooming in your yard each spring produces nectar loaded with a compound potent enough to drop a grown adult's blood pressure and heart rate when concentrated in honey, a reminder that pretty ornamentals can carry real chemistry.
In Nepal's Himalayan foothills, a wild bee called Apis laboriosa collects nectar from rhododendron flowers and turns it into honey that's naturally spiked with a nerve-affecting toxin called grayanotoxin. People have eaten small amounts of this 'mad honey' for centuries hoping it treats things like high blood pressure, but researchers found dozens of documented cases where it instead caused dangerously slow heartbeats and crashing blood pressure. Now the honey is being sold online to people overseas who don't have the generations of local knowledge about how much is safe to eat.
Key Findings
Review of 27 publications identified roughly 68 documented grayanotoxin poisoning cases in Nepal between 2009 and 2026
Middle-aged men made up about 72% of patients, most self-treating hypertension or sexual dysfunction, with cases clustering in spring during Rhododendron bloom and honey harvest
Bradycardia and hypotension occurred in nearly all cases with no recorded fatalities, though diagnosis remains purely clinical since no Nepali hospital has grayanotoxin assay capability
chevron_right Technical Summary
A review of 68 poisoning cases over five decades shows that Nepal's famous 'mad honey,' made by cliff bees from toxic rhododendron nectar, causes dangerous drops in heart rate and blood pressure, mostly in middle-aged men self-medicating for hypertension or sexual dysfunction. No deaths have been recorded, but the honey is now sold online to buyers abroad who don't know safe dosing.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Mad honey poisoning in Nepal: ecology, epidemiology, and clinical spectrum of grayanotoxin intoxication (2009-2026).
Wild honey from the Himalayan cliff bee Apis laboriosa, commonly known as mad honey, has been consumed across Nepal's mid-Himalayan belt for centuries for its perceived medicinal and psychoactive p...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Ancient Amazonian forests were planted and tended by Indigenous farmers
Forests and fruits we romanticize as wild — including many plants now in our kitchens and gardens — may exist in their current abundance precisely because an...
Rhododendron, from Ancient Greek ῥόδον (rhódon), meaning "rose", and δένδρον (déndron), meaning "tree", is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are native to eastern Asia and the Himalaya...