Honey Laundering

“Bee folk, settle here,

Do not go from this place,

I give thee house and place,

Thou must bring me honey and wax”

~Bessler, Geschichte der Bienenzucht

I have been a honey lover long before I started keeping bees. It’s hard to see but the open cells on this frame of bees are full of nectar that is being ripened into honey, soon to be capped with fresh wax for storage.

Honey is my number one, go to choice when I want to sweeten my tea, or drizzle a tad on my oatmeal and toast. I even use a dab of honey to get my yeast started when I make a loaf of bread or pizza crust. I have also had great success with honey’s healing properties on cuts or sores that won’t seem to heal…just a dab of honey under the bandage does the trick. Honey’s antibacterial qualities treat burns and scrapes and some cultures still use honey medicinally. Reportedly the US military is reinvestigating honey for healing wounds our troops sustain while in combat.

Honey is composed of carbohydrates and water and includes small amounts of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

In the USA we consume more than 400 million pounds of honey annually! That’s 1.29 pounds per person each year. Many of us buy liquid honey in jars, but an even larger portion of the population enjoy honey in manufactured cereals, breads, cookies, sauces, desserts, salad dressings, meats…the list goes on and on. That is a lot of honey, more than can be supplied by US beekeepers alone, so much of our honey is imported from around the world. US and Canadian laws keep US and Canadian beekeepers to a high standard of honey purity. But what about that honey that is coming into our ports from other countries where standards may not be as high?

A few years ago The Seattle Post-Intelligencer did a series of articles exposing the ugly reality of honey laundering, researching in depth the fact that our current laws are not adequate to protect the US honey supply.

Chinese Honey Laundered in U.S., Seattle Paper Exposes the continued fraud.
By Alan Harman


Big shipments of contaminated honey from China are being laundered in other countries to avoid U.S. import fees, protective tariffs or taxes imposed on foreign products that intentionally undercut domestic prices.
A five-month investigation by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer found that in a series of shipments in the past year, tons of honey produced in China passed through the ports of Tacoma, Wa. and Long Beach, Calif., after being fraudulently marked as a tariff-free product from Russia.
It found other shipments routed through India, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, and Thailand.
The report, which mirrors a story in Bee Culture back in 2002, says tens of thousands of pounds of honey entering the U.S. each year come from countries that raise few bees and have no record of producing honey for export.
"In the U.S., where bee colonies are dying off and demand for imported honey is soaring, traders of the thick amber liquid are resorting to elaborate schemes to dodge tariffs and health safeguards in order to dump cheap honey on the market," the newspaper reports.
"The business is plagued by foreign hucksters and shady importers who rip off conscientious U.S. packers with honey diluted with sugar water or corn syrup - or worse, tainted with pesticides or antibiotics."
Changing the county of origin from China is designed to avoid tariffs of up to 500%. Vaughn Bryant, a palynologist and an anthropology professor, spends hours at a time peering at slides of pollen samples, comparing them to track down the origins of honey with questionable heritage. For the last five years, he has analyzed the pollen in honey samples from all over the world to determine the nectar sources and origin of the honey.
He examines imported samples purported to come from Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Laos, and usually discovers the samples are blends, with a little honey from those countries and a majority of the blend coming from Chinese sources.
"And the U.S. needs to make it illegal to import honey that has been filtered to remove the pollen, which makes it almost impossible to detect where it came from."

(The italics above are quoted excerpts of the research of Alan Harman. The complete articles can be found in the ‘Catch the Buzz’ reference links below.)

Illegally imported honey is illegal because it has been adulterated in some way or contains contaminants banned by the US. But still this honey is finding its way into our ports and markets and food supply.

I am not engaging in more China bashing…I’d write no matter which country was doing this, and as you can see several are getting away with it. However based on numerous investigations, China is the originating source of unsafe honey at the time of this writing.

HonestHoney.com is a newly launched website providing more information on this problem and giving consumers, honey companies, food manufactures and retailers a way to fight back and stop the pollution of the US honey supply.

This is why knowing a local beekeeper and honey source is great, but not everyone has a beekeeper next door. Be aware too, that even small time beekeepers with a few hives, but who have a continual supply of honey at your local farmers market…well those few hives cannot produce enough for a year round supply…where is that vendor getting all that honey? They can buy it by the barrel too. It is the law for US retail honey labels to specify ‘country of origin’ but the FDA does not enforce it, so many do not include it. I only buy honey whose label specifies the country of origin to be Canada and/or USA or a blend of both. It's not a guarantee but it's about as close as I can get to assurance when I buy bottled honey.

This is a case where quality really does need to take precedence over price.

I write about the problems within the USA honey supply. No doubt there are problems abroad. If you live outside of the USA, are you aware of any illegal/tainted imported honey supply issues your country is dealing with?

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References:

Catch The Buzz e-newsletter (Kim@BeeCulture.com)
http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2009.01.02.12.02.archive.html
http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2010.02.02.12.53.archive.html
http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2010.04.30.13.26.archive.html

Honey Fact Sheet
www.honey.com

www.honesthoney.com

Seattle P-I links
www.seattlepi.com/specials/honey/
www.seattlepi.com/local/394053_honey30.asp
www.seattlepi.com/local/397445_honey26.html

In bloom in my garden today: Heuchera ‘Palace Purple’, Armeria latifolia ‘Joystick’, Star of Bethlehem, Bellis perennis (English Daisy), Dicentra spectabilis (common bleeding heart), Vancouveria hexandra, Dianthus, Day Lily, Aquilegia (Columbine), Rose, Peony, Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’, Syringa ‘Adelaide Dunbar’, Blueberry ‘Sunshine Blue’, Iris, Huckleberry, Geum ‘Lady Stratheden’, Saxifrage, Bergenia ‘Winter Glow’, old fashioned Coral Bells (Heuchera), Tellima (Fringe Cups), Ajuga (Bugleweed), Solomon’s Seal, Dodecatheon (Shooting Star), Alpine strawberry, Daphne caucasica ‘Eternal Fragrance’ and ‘Summer Ice’


Author’s photo

Guerrilla Gardeners

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
~Henry David Thoreau

I’m talking about troops that have waged a war on ugly! A war to beautify neglected and abandoned hidey-holes or forsaken weed patches around their neighborhoods and cities. Not all communities have the resources to beautify unused pubic spaces, so this is a great way for gardeners to plant a face-lift for all to enjoy. This could even be a way to revitalize or reclaim a neighborhood that has seen its share of turf wars, and I mean the real thing here.

Guerrilla Gardening.org was started as a grass-roots effort to beautify London. Now gardeners all over the world have been inspired to turn to guerrilla gardening to spruce up their communities and it is documented on this website. Click on the ‘troop digs’ tab to see the handiwork of the troops at large. You can even find if there is a regiment in your area planning the next coup!

You can be sure this idea has got me looking differently at my city’s weed patches and cracked concrete medians. I think this is a great idea, but I must caution all of us to be responsible to choose seeds and plants that we know are NOT invasive species. For example English ivy (Hedera) and Kudzu are vines brought into the USA from overseas that are now choking out many of our native species. Both contain seeds that are eaten by birds and spread around via their system of air mail. Be careful which plants you choose and be informed of how they spread before your warfare begins.

Our city randomly puts up concrete road blocks installs roundabouts in various intersections and leaves it up to residents to care for them. As you can see some are well tended.

This one, on the other hand, needs a covert operation. Credit must be given to the effort made, there are some tulips actually trying to emerge even after the out-of-control 4X4 added its imprint to the topography.

Maybe somehow a handful of annual purple poppy seeds will accidentally scatter themselves on it this week.

How about you? Are you a guerrilla gardener? Do you intend to become one? Have you ever engaged in hand-to-dirt combat under the cloak of darkness to beautify a public space? Oh, do tell!

In bloom in my garden today: primrose, hellebore, Corylopsis veitchiana (Winter Hazel), daffodils, skimmia, Mahonia repens (Oregon Grape), Tulipa turkestanica, heather, Rhodendrons, Clematis, Hyacinth ‘Blue Jacket’, Muscari (grape hyacinths)

 Author’s photos

World Wide Gardening

It’s important to take care of your little patch of earth no matter where you are.
-Jamie Durie
“The Victory Garden”


I have great news! My garden has gone global!

I have many visitors to my garden blog from USA’s coast to coast, which is so cool in and of its self. My visitors garden in cities in New York, California, Colorado, Michigan and Washington State to name some, and recently from Shiraz, Iran! I can’t tell you how exciting it is to have all of you as my gardening friends. It feels like all of our gardens combined create one extended global garden.

Having a visitor from Iran started me thinking about gardens around the world and I wondered how far Shiraz is from the site of the Garden of Eden. So off to my atlas I went and found that Shiraz seems to be close to the vicinity, at least from my perspective which is oceans away. What a spectacular garden Eden must have been. Genesis documents its location to an area encompassing a river that branches off to feed the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This would put it in modern day Iraq, near the Persian Gulf. What is gardening like where you are in Shiraz? Do you have moist, tropical conditions like Hawaii and other Pacific islands? Or do you have dry conditions where Palms, Agaves, Cactus and Salvias thrive like our southern states and Mexico and Central America? Does Bougainvillea cover your walls in glorious color? Do you have Jasmine fragrance wafting in your breezes? Is it too dry there for native orchids? Perhaps you have an abundance of aromatic herbs and grasses. What kinds of vegetables do you grow in your family gardens?

Many of the plants we enjoy in North American gardens have come from the Middle Eastern region. For instance, Tulipa turkestanica is a native of Turkey (note the second word, ‘descriptive’ name), likewise the ‘fall crocus’ Colchicum autumnalis, pictured above in my garden, come to us from the Greek and Turkish regions.
Many of our drought resistant herbs like rosemary, sage, thyme and lavender come from the dry, sandy Mediterranean Sea coastlines. I read articles relating how these shrubby herbs are prolific on rocky cliffs and sandy shores.

I also am reminded of the many botanical explorers and plant collectors, past and present who travel the globe for intriguing plant species compatible to their own regions. They make the world a little smaller, allowing us to enjoy flowers and plants in our gardens that come from far away places. You may have met some of these plant collectors at the nurseries when reading the tags of the plants you pick up. For instance, if you picked up a pot of Camellia williamsii, you held in your hand not just any Camellia, but an effort and passion of the plantsman Williams. Many of us know a Camellia, but here the second word is the name of the person who either ‘discovered’ the plant in its native habitat and brought home seeds or cuttings, or it’s the name of the person who created it through hybridization. This particular Camillia was created by a plantsman named Mr. Williams who crossed Camellia japonica (‘japonica’ = originally found in Japan) with Camellia saluenensis. That word ‘williamsii’ (pronounced william-see-eye) is like his signature on his piece of art. I’ll write more explaining Latin botanical names in a future post because once studied it becomes really informative.

In reading this blog we all have an opportunity to share our gardens with each other around the globe. So let’s grow this garden blog into one vast global place of beauty. Visit me often, write to me your thoughts, tell your friends about it. The world may not be at peace, but we can create peace in our own world through our gardens. By planting in our individual outdoor spaces, or volunteering at our local botanical gardens, we can create places of serene beauty for ourselves and those who visit. Are you with me?

In bloom in my garden today: Abyssinian Gladiola, Borage, Eupatorium ‘chocolate’, Daphne, Coreopsis, Rose, Digitalis (foxglove), Salvia, Nepeta (cat mint), Solanum crispum, Gauara, Fushia, Phygelius (cape fushia) Schizostylis, Alyssum.

Food ready for the birds: Mountain Ash berries, Pyracantha berries, Echinacea seeds, Coreopsis seeds, Liatris seeds.

Author’s photo