"In January this year [2004], 14,000 jars labelled 'Produce of India' were stopped for testing at Felixstowe docks. The honey turned out to be contaminated with chloramphenicol, a wide-spectrum antibiotic banned in food production in most countries. In susceptible individuals, it can cause a fatal blood condition, aplastic anaemia. And the country most associated with the use of chloramphenicol on bees? China - whose honey had consequently been banned on health grounds by the EU in 2002. Commenting on the Felixstowe seizure, Vijay Sardana, head of the Indian trade body CITA, said that India believed Chinese honey was being smuggled into India through Nepal, repackaged and then sold abroad.

China rejects such accusations, saying that competitor nations have a vested interest in peddling untruths to get China's honey pushed off the market. And Beijing has received new support from Brussels, which has just rescinded the import ban after EU inspectors confirmed that China was moving to stop chloramphenicol use and establish an effective control and detection system for food safety.

During the two-year EU ban, the disappearance of legal Chinese honey caused upheaval. For years it had been a basic ingredient in blended honeys because of its sweetness and cheapness; now packers worldwide switched to Argentine, Mexican and east-European honey. Yet chloramphenicol-tainted honey kept turning up.

In the export market there was a dramatic increase in honey on offer from Vietnam, for instance, where the bees had gone into such an overdrive that a country not known as a significant honey exporter had thousands of tons for sale. And there was something else. Thomas Heck, a director of the leading British honey importer Kimpton Brothers, recalls being offered a container-load of Vietnamese honey two years ago. 'Standard Vietnamese honey is dark, but this was white,' he said. 'It wasn't from one of our usual suppliers. We turned it down.'

Singapore suddenly discovered a penchant for beekeeping - surprising in a country which, according to Bee Culture magazine, 'has no bees' in the commercial sense. Overnight in early 2002, just as Chinese honey was banned by the EU, Singapore became the world's fourth biggest honey exporter and the tonnage of honey sold to Australia, which in 2001 had been zero, leaped to nearly 1,500 tonnes.

As emails and faxes kept arriving at honey packers in Europe and the US offering cheap honey from some unlikely places, investigators came to a startling conclusion: contaminated honey from China was being relabelled and offered for sale as the produce of third-world countries. In the past 12 months, honey labelled as the produce of Cyprus, Tanzania, Moldova, Romania, Argentina, Portugal, Hungary, Spain, Bulgaria and Vietnam has turned up in European ports, honey blenders and supermarkets, testing positive for chloramphenicol. In this period, it has been found in 14 consignments intercepted in Europe and the EU's 'rapid alert' food safety system in Brussels has been notified."


A bitter taste of honey
Michael Durham

"Approximately 3 million bees were found swarming around a man's Queens, N.Y., home on Wednesday night, and were confiscated --  to the relief of his neighbors.

Yi Gin Chen had beehives packed into the backyard -- about 45 hives in total, said Andrew Cote, president of the New York City Beekeepers Association. Cote said Chen, a beekeeper in his native China, had contacted the beekeepers' association earlier in the month for help with the bees because he was trying to sell his Corona, Queens, home.

Anthony Planakis, who heads bee control for the NYPD, told The New York Post of Chen's home, 'Picture 45 dogs in one apartment. It’s cruelty to the bees.'

New York City has ramped up its bee-control efforts recently. Earlier this month, Planakis -- who has been fighting stingers since 1995 -- was promoted from officer to detective by NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelley, and granted a 'bee-mobile' and other equipment, The New York Post reported."

3 million bees seized from Queens, N.Y., man's home
By Elizabeth Chuck


I like this Yi Gin Chen character.  The NYPD, on the other hand, should stay out of the beekeeping business.  Cops arrest bad guys, beekeepers handle bees.

"Honey is the most natural of sweeteners, coming to us directly from bees and flowers.

Well, maybe not so directly. These days, a long supply chain often links beehives half a world away with the jar of honey in your kitchen. And there's suspicion in that supply chain: global trade disputes; accusations of unfair competition; even honey identity-switching.

There are special restrictions on honey imports from one country: China. And some Chinese honey exporters have been trying to evade those restrictions.

China is the world's biggest producer of honey, and up until a few years ago, it shipped large quantities of honey to the U.S. Chinese honey was cheap. It was so cheap, in fact, that American beekeepers complained it was driving them out of business.

They complained that China was dumping that honey, selling it for an artificially low price.

In 2001, U.S. officials agreed. For most of the following decade, the U.S. tried different ways to slow down imports of Chinese honey, but nothing worked too well. Finally, in 2008, officials simply imposed huge import duties on all honey from China. This made Chinese honey very expensive, and it almost completely shut down imports of honey from China.

But did it really? Dutch Gold's Jill Clark says statistics of U.S. honey imports tell a curious story. At the moment when imports of Chinese honey dried up, 'all of a sudden we saw these other countries starting to sell a lot of honey into the U.S., and they weren't countries that tended to have any commercial beekeeping.' The big increases came from some of China's neighbors: Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Clark says that Dutch Gold figured it had to be falsely labeled honey that was really coming from China. 'We were offered it many times, and with these very cheap prices we knew exactly what it was. It was nothing that we wanted anything to do with whatsoever,' she says.

There was more evidence than just the price. There was pollen. When bees collect nectar from flowers, they bring back pollen, too, and it ends up in raw honey. Scientists can look at those grains of pollen under a microscope and tell if they came from flowers that grow in China but not in Indonesia.

The honey from Indonesia and Malaysia dried up late last year, as quickly as it appeared.

But Phipps believes that Chinese exporters have found a new trade route. This year, he says, 'we saw a huge surge in Indian honey entering our country.'

Phipps is convinced that this is really Chinese honey, too. But this time the evidence is not as clear. Unlike Malaysia and Indonesia, India does have a history of honey production. Also, laboratories are not finding Chinese pollen in this honey.

Phipps thinks that the lack of pollen is simply evidence that the Chinese have found another way to game the system. He thinks that the Chinese are filtering that honey before they export it, to remove the pollen. Then they're mixing it into raw Indian honey, with pollen that indicates that it's from India."

Funny Honey? Bringing Trust To A Sector Full Of Suspicion
by Dan Charles