Honey in the Heart is a long-running collaboration between Panya Forest and the Karen communities of Hin Lad Nai in Chiang Rai. It is a project about bees, about memory, and about what it means to live with a forest rather than from it.
The Karen people of Hin Lad Nai have maintained a sacred relationship with the wild honey bees of their forest for generations. Their practices of sustainable harvesting, seasonal ceremony, and communal land stewardship represent some of the most intact indigenous ecological knowledge in northern Thailand.
Through visits, documentation, storytelling, and shared work, we help amplify the voices and practices of the community. This is not a project that arrives with answers. It arrives with questions, with respect, and with cameras and notebooks.
We document seasonal ceremonies, interview elders, photograph the forest, and help share these stories with the wider world through our blog, social media, and community events.
Volunteers with interests in photography, storytelling, documentation, and ecological knowledge are especially welcome on this project. A minimum stay of two weeks is preferred.