"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

  "Bee expert Marla Spivak is concerned about the pesticides known as neonicotinoids, but also about other threats to bees that are much easier to pronounce: Viruses. Mites. Drought.

A recent New York Times article about the alarming decline of bees discussed all of those. But Spivak, a professor in entomology and director of the Bee Lab at the University of Minnesota, homes in on a broader problem: a lack of flowers.

'We really have a flowerless landscape out there, and bees need flowers for good nutrition,' Spivak said Monday on The Daily Circuit. 'If bees have good nutrition, and a lot of pollen and protein coming in and nectar coming in, they're better able to fight off these diseases. And it helps them detoxify some of the pesticides. We really need bee-friendly flowers out there, everywhere.'



"A caller from St. Cloud said she was planning her garden for this year, and asked what seeds she could plant to help the bees in her area. 'Go with the native perennials,' Spivak advised. 'All of those native plants that flower are great for bees.' She listed some by common name:

•Prairie clover.
•Mountain mint.
•Bee balm.
•Milkweeds.
•Late season asters and goldenrods.

Milkweed is also good for monarch butterflies, Spivak said. And 'Honeybees really like clover and alfalfa and buckwheat,' so people with enough land to plant should consider those."


With hives in sharp decline, expert calls for bee-friendly flowers
from: minnesota.publicradio.org

"AT THIS time of year Gordon Wardell loves to stand amid the almond blossoms in California's San Joaquin valley, listening to the “low-pitch, warm, happy hum” of millions of bees. But the bees are not as happy as they sound, which is why Mr Wardell, who has a PhD in entomology and is a de facto bee doctor, is here.

More than 80% of the world's almonds are grown in California and, to pollinate them, the 7,000 or so growers hire about 1.4m of America's 2.3m commercial hives. Thousands of trucks deliver the hives in February—from Maine, Florida, the Carolinas and elsewhere—and will soon pick them up again. The bees' job is to flit from one blossom to the next, gorging themselves and in the process spreading the trees' sexual dust.

Since 2006, however, bees have been suffering from 'colony collapse disorder' (CCD), a mysterious affliction that has drastically reduced their numbers. As a result, says Joe MacIlvaine, the president of Paramount Farming and the largest almond-grower in the world, the rental cost of a hive has tripled in the past five years to about $150. Bee rental now accounts for 15% of Paramount's costs.

So Paramount has hired Mr Wardell, who has been studying bees for 30 years and CCD since it broke out. Its cause may be mobile-telephony radiation, viruses, fungi, mites and pesticides—or none of the above. In the absence of a clear explanation, Mr Wardell is concentrating on something different: nutrition.

A healthy worker bee spends about four weeks in its hive, feeding on protein-rich pollen and nursing larvae, and then another two weeks in the field eating sugary honey until its proteins are depleted and it dies. For some reason bees are getting too little protein in the hive, thus dying after only about four weeks, almost as soon as they venture outside. So Mr Wardell is force-feeding them protein. He owns a patent for MegaBee, which he says 'looks like cookie dough'. He puts a bit of this into the hives, blocking the bees' entrance so that they have to chomp their way through it. As part of his new job, Mr Wardell is working with beekeepers across the country to supplement bee diets everywhere."


Almond pollination in California
Vitamin Bee A new attempt to save the most vital workers in the orchards
from: www.economist.com

"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

"Populations of honey bees and other pollinators have declined worldwide in recent years. A variety of stressors have been implicated as potential causes, including agricultural pesticides. Neonicotinoid insecticides, which are widely used and highly toxic to honey bees, have been found in previous analyses of honey bee pollen and comb material. However, the routes of exposure have remained largely undefined. We used LC/MS-MS to analyze samples of honey bees, pollen stored in the hive and several potential exposure routes associated with plantings of neonicotinoid treated maize. Our results demonstrate that bees are exposed to these compounds and several other agricultural pesticides in several ways throughout the foraging period. During spring, extremely high levels of clothianidin and thiamethoxam were found in planter exhaust material produced during the planting of treated maize seed. We also found neonicotinoids in the soil of each field we sampled, including unplanted fields. Plants visited by foraging bees (dandelions) growing near these fields were found to contain neonicotinoids as well. This indicates deposition of neonicotinoids on the flowers, uptake by the root system, or both. Dead bees collected near hive entrances during the spring sampling period were found to contain clothianidin as well, although whether exposure was oral (consuming pollen) or by contact (soil/planter dust) is unclear. We also detected the insecticide clothianidin in pollen collected by bees and stored in the hive. When maize plants in our field reached anthesis, maize pollen from treated seed was found to contain clothianidin and other pesticides; and honey bees in our study readily collected maize pollen. These findings clarify some of the mechanisms by which honey bees may be exposed to agricultural pesticides throughout the growing season. These results have implications for a wide range of large-scale annual cropping systems that utilize neonicotinoid seed treatments."

Multiple Routes of Pesticide Exposure for Honey Bees Living Near Agricultural Fields
Christian H. Krupke, Greg J. Hunt, Brian D. Eitzer, Gladys Andino, Krispn Given

"Even though it is usually easy to get a bottle of honey, it doesn't always mean that it is good for you. Many larger stores pasteurize their honey, destroying much of their nutritional value and filling it with artificial enhancers to make up the lack of flavor, she said. The stores microfilter out the pollen, removing much of the natural taste while trying to make it look pretty on the shelf.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture's Grading Standards of Extracted Honey, filtered honey is honey that has had most or all of its fine particles, pollen grains, air bubbles or other materials normally found in suspension removed.

"People think, 'Oh, honey is honey' until they try natural, raw honey. Then they say, 'Oh my goodness, there is a difference,'" Marion said.

According to the USDA affiliated National Honey Board website, there are more than 300 different types of honey, and each has its own taste and coloring. While pollen is naturally kept inside the honey, many consumers prefer clear, liquid honey that stays in a liquid form for long periods of time. This kind of filtered honey is what is usually sold in stores.

"'Most [local] farms don't pasteurize their honey, which keeps the vitamins and other benefits in the honey,' certified clinical nutritionist and registered dietitian Rukhsana Shanbhag said. 'At the same time, you are supporting local farms.'"

Geneva beekeeping couple runs sweet business
By Anna-Michelle Lavandier



You can find real honey here.

"What would a garden – or farm – be without bees? A lot less fruitful. Honeybees account for about 80 percent of all insect pollination. Understanding bees and their needs makes it easier to help them help us.
"Favorite plants for bees include: aster, seaside daisy, lavender, California lilac, coneflowers, poppies, yarrow, cosmos, oregano, thyme, rosemary, roses, buckwheat, sage, penstemon, snapdragons, morning glories, sunflowers, tower of jewels and golden rod.
"Bees need pollen sources most of the year. If planting a bee-friendly garden, choose plants that bloom a long time. Mix several different kinds of plants to extend the bloom season from early spring until winter. Group similar plants together (ideally, in clusters 4 feet across); that makes it easier for the bees to find them."

To bee or not to bee – there's no question
– Debbie Arrington

"Using honey to treat wounds is nothing new; even ancient civilizations used it in this manner. However, this is the sort of thing that usually gets relegated to 'folk healing'. It seems scientifically obvious: honey is very acidic (antibacterial), and it produces its own hydrogen peroxide when combined with the fluid which drains from a wound! The extremely high sugar content of honey means it contains very little water. So, it draws the pus and fluid from the wound, thereby speeding the healing process. Furthermore, the honey contains powerful germ-fighting phytochemicals from the plants that produced the pollen harvested by the honeybees. Having already been accepted by the overseas mainstream medical community for some time, North America finally caught on. MEDIHONEY is, according to Derma Sciences' website, 'the first honey-based product cleared for use by Health Canada and also the first cleared for use by the FDA.'"

FDA Quietly Acknowledges Medical Benefits of Honey
by: Liz Walker

"More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn't exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled 'honey.' The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world's food safety agencies.

The food safety divisions of the  World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that's been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn't honey. However, the FDA isn't checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen."

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey:
Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins
by Andrew Schneider



For real honey, pollen included, look here.