Fighting Honey Laundering

Live Link:  Zester Daily

By Terra Brockman   |   Monday, 23 August 2010   

I was a teenage beekeeper. And a geeky one at that.

I knew that one bee, in her brief lifetime, collected nectar enough for only a half teaspoon of finished honey. I knew that she and her sisters together flew more than 50,000 miles, dropping in on about 2 million flowers to produce just one of the one-pound glass jars that I filled with glowing liquid amber at midsummer and again in late autumn. And I loved reading about bee behavior as much as I loved inhaling the distilled essence of summer in freshly extracted honey.

And so, even though I had long ago hung up my bee veil near a stack of old hive parts, I was distressed to learn that the tale of honey has recently become more sticky than sweet. 

On the global front, there’s been a lot of buzz about “honey laundering.” This accurate neologism refers to the way in which millions of pounds of Chinese honey have been making their way into the United States labeled as originating from other countries, and often contaminated with the banned antibiotic chloramphenicol, which can cause fatal aplastic anemia.

Time stands still in a Honey yard

 

As the slow methodical dance unfolds between the Apiarist and her hives, a drop of sweat slowly rolls down the back of her neck. Even at 40F in February, she knows that the actions she takes now can make or break this colony of 50,000 bees. The husbandry that she applies will provide liquid nectar in a few months time – a sweetener that has been cherished throughout thousands of years by the human race, and of course, wildlife.