"A team of entomologists from the University of Illinois has found a possible link between the practice of feeding commercial honeybees high-fructose corn syrup and the collapse of honeybee colonies around the world. The team outlines their research and findings in a paper they've had published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...


Commercial honeybee enterprises began feeding bees high-fructose corn syrup back in the 70's after research was conducted that indicated that doing so was safe. Since that time, new pesticides have been developed and put into use and over time it appears the bees' immunity response to such compounds may have become compromised.

The researchers aren't suggesting that high-fructose corn syrup is itself toxic to bees, instead, they say their findings indicate that by eating the replacement food instead of honey, the bees are not being exposed to other chemicals that help the bees fight off toxins, such as those found in pesticides.

Specifically, they found that when bees are exposed to the enzyme p-coumaric, their immune system appears stronger—it turns on detoxification genes. P-coumaric is found in pollen walls, not nectar, and makes its way into honey inadvertently via sticking to the legs of bees as they visit flowers. Similarly, the team discovered other compounds found in poplar sap that appear to do much the same thing. It all together adds up to a diet that helps bees fight off toxins, the researchers report. Taking away the honey to sell it, and feeding the bees high-fructose corn syrup instead, they claim, compromises their immune systems, making them more vulnerable to the toxins that are meant to kill other bugs."



Researchers find high-fructose corn syrup may be tied to worldwide collapse of bee colonies
by Bob Yirka

"Honey is more than a sweet treat to bees. It turns out that it doses honeybees with certain compounds that switch on their detox defenses.

Instead of relying on their own honey for food during the winter, today’s commercially kept honeybees often get fed sugar substitutes and protein supplements. The sugar sources such as high-fructose corn syrup may be missing something helpful, however. New tests find compounds in honey that trigger surges of activity in genes needed for detoxifying chemicals or for making antimicrobial agents, researchers report April 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Undisturbed by beekeepers, adult bees would sip flower nectar to keep themselves going and collect pollen to squish into a softened paste to feed to their young. They make honey from extra nectar and store it to eat during tough times without fresh flowers.

In that honey, the most effective trigger for detox genes is p-coumaric acid, reports entomologist May Berenbaum and her colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It’s a building block of the coatings for pollen grains."

Bees need honey's natural pharmaceuticals
By Susan Milius

  "Food-safety experts have found that much of the honey sold in the United States isn't actually honey, but a concoction of corn or rice syrup, malt sweeteners or 'jiggery' (cheap, unrefined sugar), plus a small amount of genuine honey, according to Wired UK.

Worse, some honey — much of which is imported from Asia — has been found to contain toxins like lead and other heavy metals, as well as drugs like chloramphenicol, an antibiotic, according to a Department of Justice news release.

And because cheap honey from China was being dumped on the U.S. market at artificially low prices, Chinese honey is now subject to additional import duties. So Chinese exporters simply ship their honey to Thailand or other countries, where it is relabeled to hide its origins, according to NPR.org.

This international 'honey-laundering' scandal has now resulted in a Justice Department indictment of two U.S. companies and the charging of five people with selling mislabeled honey that also contained chloramphenicol.

Honey Solutions of Baytown, Texas, and Groeb Farms of Onsted, Mich., have agreed to pay millions of dollars in fines and implement corporate compliance measures following a lengthy Justice Department investigation.

'This is a huge deal for the industry. This is the first admission by a U.S. packer,' of knowingly importing mislabeled honey, Eric Wenger, chairman of True Source Honey, told NPR. True Source Honey is an industry consortium with an auditing system to guarantee the actual origin of honey.

Honey isn't the only food product subject to impurities and mislabeling. Olive oil is often cut with cheaper oils and sold at premium prices, a practice that's expected to expand as a shortage of the oil (caused by a 2012 drought in southern Europe) hits global markets."


'Honey Laundering' an International Scandal, Experts Say
Marc Lallanilla

"The combination of honey and lemon offers health benefits that involve fighting harmful serious diseases as well as the common cold, the London Daily Mail Newspaper's website, Mail Online, reports. Lemons, a citrus fruit, rank highest in their content of citric acid. This acid is instrumental to your digestive system and helps your stomach digest food better while boosting your metabolism. Because of this, you possibly can lose weight from consuming it. Adding honey to lemon juice provides more benefit with honey's antioxidant power. Honey helps fight off infection and soothes a sore throat."


What Are the Benefits of Honey & Lemon Juice?
By Carole Anne Tomlinson

"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

"Honey developed in Israel--newly released to the US marketplace and abroad--may offer much needed fortification for those undergoing chemotherapy treatment. After 30 plus years of research, Life-Mel Honey shows promise for those undergoing the rigorous demands of cancer treatment by improving blood composition and overall wellbeing.

Based on the concept of apitherapy, where bees are feed medicinal herbs in order to produce a more potent byproduct, Life-Mel honey has shown considerable potential in clinical studies by lowering incidence of developing anemia, leucopenia, neutropenia and thrombocytopenia—costly byproducts of chemotherapy. Also in the study 64 percent of patient’s hemoglobin levels improved and 32 percent reported an enhanced quality of life."


Medicinal Honey from Israel May Hold Promise for Chemo Patients
By Julie A. Sergel

"Bees at a cluster of apiaries in northeastern France have been producing honey in mysterious shades of blue and green, alarming their keepers who now believe residue from containers of M&M's candy processed at a nearby biogas plant is the cause. Since August, beekeepers around the town of Ribeauville in the region of Alsace have seen bees returning to their hives carrying unidentified colorful substances that have turned their honey unnatural shades.

Mystified, the beekeepers embarked on an investigation and discovered that a biogas plant 4 km (2.5 miles) away has been processing waste from a Mars plant producing M&M's, bite-sized candies in bright red, blue, green, yellow and brown shells."


M&M’s blamed for coloring bees honey
VINCENT KESSLER/REUTERS

"Some fear higher world food prices are making food counterfeiting the next big global trend. Counterfeit food is a way to steal millions and put food safety at extreme risk...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has its own police force for tackling fraudulent foods and drugs...

At last month’s 9th Annual Anti-Counterfeiting and Brand Protection Summit held in Midtown West, NY, a fact sheet from DuPont said counterfeiting cost U.S. businesses $200 billion to $250 billion annually, affecting 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Food and beverages are only a slice of that, of course, but consider that Russia has documented $3.3 billion in annual losses due just to counterfeit vodka, the total for food and beverage products would probably be staggering.

Michigan State University’s Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program has developed a national data base for tracking counterfeit food by looking for such characteristics as:

-Diluted oil, 16 percent of counterfeit food cases involve olive oil.

-Diluted milk, 14 percent of counterfeit food involved watered down milk.

-Adulterated honey, 7 percent of counterfeit food involved were adulterated sugar and corn.

MSU’s Anti-Counterfeiting program even has a top ten list for food most likely to be phony. Making the list are: vanilla extract, maple syrup, grape wine, apple juice, coffee, orange juice, saffron, honey, milk, and olive oil."



Food Safety Endangered Worldwide by Increased Food Counterfeiting
By Dan Flynn

"Honey bees are big money makers for U.S. agriculture. These social and hardworking insects produce six hive products – honey, pollen, royal jelly, beeswax, propolis, and venom – all collected and used by people for various nutritional and therapeutic purposes.

Honey, of course, is the most well-known and economically important hive product. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agriculture Statistics Service, honey bees made more than 148 million pounds of honey last year. With the cost of honey at a record high at about $1.73 per pound, that’s a value of over $256 million.

After honey, beeswax is the second most important hive product from an economic standpoint. The beeswax trade dates to ancient Greece and Rome, and in Medieval Europe, the substance was a unit of trade for taxes and other purposes. The market remains strong today. Beeswax is popular for making candles and as an ingredient in artists’ materials and in leather and wood polishes. The pharmaceutical industry uses the substance as a binding agent, time-release mechanism, and drug carrier. Beeswax is also one of the most commonly used waxes in cosmetics. The U.S. is a major producer of raw beeswax, as well as a worldwide supplier of refined beeswax.

But the greatest importance of honey bees to agriculture isn’t a product of the hive at all. It’s their work as crop pollinators. This agricultural benefit of honey bees is estimated to be between 10 and 20 times the total value of honey and beeswax. In fact, bee pollination accounts for about $15 billion in added crop value. Honey bees are like flying dollar bills buzzing over U.S. crops.

Luckily for the honey bees and the many crops that depend on them for pollination, FDA recently approved a new drug to control American foulbrood, a widespread bacterial disease that kills bee larvae."


New Drug Approved to Help Agriculture's Helpful Honey Bees
By Melanie McLean, DVM, Center for Veterinary Medicine, FDA

"Honey has been called the food of the gods; because it’s nutritional and healing properties have been known for thousands of years. It is a natural product with beneficial effects. It has been used for centuries as a cure-all; sometimes with miraculous results. It can be used both internally and topically for a myriad of conditions. Honey is hygroscopic; which means it has the property of absorbing moisture. It has natural antiseptic and soothing properties and is still found today in some creams and ointments as well as cough and cold remedies. This golden nectar can help to support your immune system and make disease resistance easier. Because it is a natural product there should never be any side effects...
Honey is produced all over the world and Cinnamon is widely grown in Sri Lanka, India, Java, Sumatra, the West Indies, Brazil, Vietnam, Madagascar, Zanzibar, and Egypt. Did you know though that when the two are combined they become a force to be reckoned with?

WHAT ARE THEY REPUTED TO CURE?
ANTI-AGEING...ARTHRITIS...BAD BREATH...BLADDER INFECTIONS...CHOLESTEROL...COLDS...CANCER...FATIGUE...GAS...HEART DISEASES...HAIR LOSS & BALDNESS...HEARING LOSS...INDIGESTION...INFERTILITY...INFLUENZA...IMMUNE SYSTEM...INSECT BITES...PIMPLES...SKIN INFECTIONS...TOOTHACHE...UPSET STOMACH...WEIGHT LOSS..."


CINNAMON & HONEY THE MAGIC MIXTURE
by Sue Bailey