Honey Laundering

Imagine a death defying car chase scene, hot babes, and rugged assassins protecting the illegal drug trade.  It sounds so Hollywood!.  It isn’t opium from the exotic fields of Afghanistan.  It isn’t the French Connection.  And it isn’t a Mexican drug cartel de-limbing  the population and shooting entire towns.   This is less refined, not romantic.  We’re talking about our own food supply. Honey, honey.

I remember the Ohio Players “Honey” album from 74 with a naked Playboy bunny dripping with honey.   It looked like real honey, but the rumor was that she had skin damage caused by the fake honey used by the studio.   Fake Honey!  Even it the 70’s, that was farfetched.

Fast forward to the new millennium, where colonies are collapsing, and bees are being polluted by toxic environments, neonicotinoids, and super parasites.   Not only are the pollination numbers down, it’s hard to find real honey.

Honey. 

Honey is the nectar based food source of bees that has been collected, regurgitated, and dried into a substance of specific gravity, then capped off by the bees.   The bees’ regurgitation process adds peroxide and other qualities that make the honey antiseptic.  Honey kills MRSA.  It helps support immune health too.   It isn’t corn syrup, molasses, sugar water, or guar gum.  It is flower nectar made into bee food, and it’s delicious.

Pooh bear loves it. Everyone from about the age of 4 on knows that honey comes from honey bees and it is delectable.  But why the car chases, the death threats, the intrigue across continents?

The Chinese are honey laundering a cheap substance made of sugar, water, alum, and food coloring.  It smells like chemicals.    According to Bloomberg news, “The charges from the probe, called “Project Honeygate,” mark the culmination of a two-part investigation that began in 2008 and included U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. attorney’s office in the northern district of Illinois. In the first phase, federal authorities charged 14 individuals for allegedly evading about $80 million in anti-dumping duties.”

The honey laundering bill rose to 180 Billion, a little later in the investigation.     In France,  according to South China Morning Post, “Last month, a study shook France, according to which 10 per cent of the honey consumed in the country is "fraudulent". The samples had been labeled as French, but originated either in China or Eastern Europe.”  Imagine who would star in that movie?  Duping the French on food sounds like a capitol crime.

You might think, what is the problem?  It’s a big problem.  People take honey to help with allergies because it contains pollen and nectar. Honey never goes bad. It is an amazing, nutritional substance.

 Fake honey doesn’t have those properties, and fake honey might have aluminum or other metals.   It’s crap.

People with sugar issues eat honey, not sugar because honey carries monosaccarides fructose and glucose.  Many people use honey as a spiritual or religious source.  If you buy honey, you should be getting honey, not some weird corn syrup. Aluminum, molasses crappacino.

So what do you do?  Don’t buy honey from mass producers or store labels.  Buy it from a beekeeper. Buy it from a farmer’s market.  If you don’t know where to go, here are several sources:

Local Harvest   http://www.localharvest.org/organic-honey.jsp

Online honey locator   It’s easy to use!  http://www.honeylocator.com/

Local Honey Sources   http://www.localhoneysources.org/

October update

Not sure how the bees are doing, but there was some more robbing going on. I reduced the entrances to 1 inch.  It seems like things are going ok.  I really want to peek in there, but not right now.  The bees are all over the one plant that is the sweetest in the yard, the stevia.  I have pics.

3 hives

Keith came over and we looked at the hives today.  The oldest hive is chalk full of bees.  The honey inside is red, maybe like a birdfeeder red.  I wonder if they are sucking up a birdfeeder's nectar, or if the red sun flowers did it.  It's red.  Ruby red.  That hive is great.  The guard bees seem to hate me but didn't bother Keith at all.

The newest hive was light.  It seemed that there weren't a lot of bees going in and out, and not a lot of eggs.   There is no shortage of capped honey in there, but sheesh, not enough brood.  I fed them a patty and am considering pinching the queen and combining hives.

The green hive has really full comb, lots of eggs, lots of bees on the comb, but not really a lot of new comb.   I think it will behoove me to combine these two hives.

I'll carry one over to the other, place newspaper between them and combine them for a week, then move the comb down into the frame.  I would feel great about it if I actually saw the queen in the green hive.  Not seeing her bothers me.  I don't want to pinch the queen if I can avoid it.  maybe she is just not laying.

I want Jose to come and see the hives.

New Hive

Got a new hive today, and stung once.

These bees are suspect.  I haven't actually interacted with them because they were too darn mad.  Anyway, I will likely check them out tomorrow.

I hope to give these bees to my brother, but I am not sure how to get them to his house.   The numbers are low and they just don't seem vibrant.  I am worried about this new hive. I guess winter will tell.


Bees want to survive, I get that.  I guess we'll have to see.

Drones

An unknown force rode into the hives on the wind. Maybe it was barometric pressure, maybe a measurable drop in heat, but after many hot nights of bees out much of the night sipping on mint juleps and standing on the porch, the party is over.

Bodies are strewn on the ground.

I coaxed two bees onto a piece of comb I found on the ground.  Each tried to sip the honey, but couldn't. They were drones.  Hungry.  Men. Exiled. Helpless.

Romeo knew what the bees know. Exile is worse.  They starve after being kicked out.  Some girls team up to fly high and drop the wounded drone in a place he can't return.


The bodies pile up. It is carnage.

And yet, the massacre of the drones signales a queenright hive preparing for winter.  She has spoken.

Only the contributors can stay.

The bodies have been piled
the fire, stocked.
Let the ashes be ashes.
Let the dust--
Tomorrow we will suck nectar from the lips
Tomorrow we will gather pollen to our hips
In winter we will come together as sisters
In sisters we will come together for winter
Let the ashes be ashes
Let the dust be.

Combining hives

Either this is going to be brilliant, or an epic fail!

I bought syrup and protein patties, feeder tubs and frames in order to separate a hive.  I took two frames of really stunning, honey filled, brood filled hives, and moved them to the new apiary.

Also, I fed the new bee division and screened the opening.  Boy the bees seem mad and I am not sure if I accidentally got the queen. I don't think so, but we'll see.  In the morning I am going to look at them really closely and see what I have.

I am not sure if I should  lay some paper between the borrowed bars and the top bars, but I plan on blending them as early as tomorrow, and as late as day after tomorrow.

What if I accidentally got the queen?  Could I hang a queen cage of the queen I have in the other hive? I have no idea.  I figure if I see the queen in the morning, I'll cross that bridge. In the meantime, my idea is to get these girls all together for one happy, happy, hive.

New Hive in a box

After being gone a week, I was afraid to check the hive.  I went in and found honey all over the the tops of the comb.  It was beginning to look like a thriving hive. Just on a really small scale.

I called Jose and told him I was interested in getting a hive.  He said he would call me back.  He called at 6:00 a.m. and was here by 6:30.  He had one of those standard white bee boxes in the back of his truck.   He carried it, without any protection except for his hat, across my front yard, through the gate, past the pool and to the far corner of the yard.   I put on my hat, veil, gloves, and brought out the smoker.  He lit the smoker, smoked them good, then opened up the hive.

There was propolis and burr comb on the top.  8 frames were full of bees and two had drawn out comb but nothing stored yet.  It was a really busy hive.
"Where's the queen?" I asked.
"Bee keepers don't spend their time going through all the frames to find the queen.  She's there.  There's eggs and larvae, she is doing her job.  I have hundreds of hives to check.  I can't be looking at each frame trying to find the queen.  If there is brood, there's a queen."

It was odd to me to hear the business point of view as opposed to the organic beekeeper point of view.   The TBH people are always looking for the queen.  The professional keeper wants honey stores and pollination jobs.  He wants to control the mites and make sure things are increasing.  That's about it.

We put the lid back on and left those bees along. Jose got stung in the arm and the nasty bee that stung him landed on my veil.  It gave me an earful.  The high pitched whine sounds like being told off with a helium hum. I was definitely getting the message that those bees were pissed off and disoriented.

We returned to the TBH where Jose found a nice brood pattern.  Maybe they will make it.