Natalia Feringa

Bee mortality has been an issue for years, in 2006 when the crisis erupted it was called the “colony collapse disorder”, today scientists believe that this rapid dying can be traced back to a number of combined stress factors such as parasites, insecticide and agri-business monocultures. As a result of this dying, the amount of honey they produce keeps dropping as well. Nonetheless, the demand for honey in today’s society still remains and is even increasing but paradoxically so is the supply. The explanation for this gap is honey adulteration. This new phenomenon jeopardizes honest beekeeping and in turn poses a threat to the bee community (Lucy Kennedy, 2018)

What it is all about?

Honey consumption has been rising over the last few decades, this is firstly due to the increasing population and secondly because of the growing trend toward more natural products. Honey works as a natural sweetener, by using this as an ingredient, the product is associated with a natural product, in other words using honey in a product gives it an added value, as it is linked to be a natural product. So naturally honey seems like a profitable business if it were not for the problem of the declining bee colonies. However, the market quickly began to boom in spite of the decreasing production. A reason for that is honey adulteration (Lucy Kennedy, 2018). There are many forms of adulteration (i.e. decrease in quality of a product as a result of adding other substances to it), but the most commonly used method is diluting it with different sugar syrups, rice syrup being the most frequently used one, as it is hard to detect. Other methods are harvesting and postharvest processing of immature honey or the use of ion-exchange resins (N. García & Schwarzinger, 2020). A response to this was putting a huge tariff on exported honey that was known to be altercated (Lucy Kennedy, 2018). Quickly thereafter, the exporters started to mask and mislabel the geographical and botanical origin of honey (N. García & Schwarzinger, 2020), for instance through transshipment of their products through third party countries. The problem with all that is that the altercated product is sold much cheaper on the market, thus displacing local honey producers, which makes it hard for them to keep their business alive. A well-known example of such a honey fraud is the so-called “Project Honeygate”, this was one of the largest food fraud cases in US history, which took place between 2008 and 2014/15 (Lucy Kennedy, 2018). While the US has huge tariffs on imported honey from China, five individuals and two domestic honey-processing companies have allegedly evaded the anti-dumping duties of honey originating from China, which in the end amounted to a total of 180 million dollars (Staff, 2013).

Figure 67.1 – Evolution of US honey production and imports (2001 – 2017): While the production is slightly decreasing over the last two decades, imports are tremendously increasing (N. L. García, 2018).

Impact on the honest beekeeping community

Beekeepers who do not harvest unripe honey or dilute it, have a disadvantage on the market, they sell their honey in lower quantities and at a higher price than the imported honey, and therefore are often forced from the market and struggle to keep their business alive. To remain in the business in spite of the hard conditions the beekeepers are often forced to push the bees to their limits, one way of doing that is that they overharvest honey from their hives and feed their bees sugar syrups over winter, sugar syrups are more of an emergency solution in case of a food drought, but using this as a substitute on a regular basis can negatively influence the health of the bees. Another possibility is to expand into the pollinating business, which means that they drive their beehives to agricultural crops, where the bees pollinate them. This frequent dislocating of the beehives can distress the bees and more importantly they are exposed to different pests and diseases, which altogether weakens them (Pass the honey, 2021). Consequently, more beekeepers have to close their shops, which leads to fewer bees pollinating agricultural crops, and considering that honey bees are the most important commercial pollinators, accounting for 35% of the global food production (Genersch, 2010), this is a critical issue. Furthermore, this has an impact on the global economy, as on the one hand the honey market is flooded by cheaper and impure honey, and on the other side there is an influence on other crops but how exactly these crops will be affected with declining colonies and to what extend the economy will be affected by this is yet to be discussed. Lastly, the biodiversity will also be affected as they partly depend on animal pollination.

Impact on the consumer

Another consequence of honey fraud is the deception of the consumer. The customer believes to be buying a natural product, but that is not always the case. Unripe honey is in contrast to ripe honey more fluid, less tasty, more difficult to handle, and has no microbial stability for long-term storage (N. García & Schwarzinger, 2020). Roughly said, it is a scam against the customer.
A further vital point is that in some cases it can endanger the health of the consumer. To circle back to the before mentioned food fraud case “Project Honeygate”, there was one specific purchase order, called PO995, which was a purchase order for Polish honey, where they found out that the honey contained the an antibiotic called chloramphenicol. This antibiotic is prohibited for any use in the food industry, as it is harmful to our health and although the honey producers did not put it into the honey for any enhancement reasons, they fed this antibiotic to their bees to make them more efficient (Lucy Kennedy, 2018). By feeding this antibiotic to their bees, they inevitably endanger the health of the consumer.

What can be done about it?

To summarize, honey fraud has an impact on food safety, food security, the economy and ecological sustainability but foremost on beekeepers, who do not participate in this scheme (N. L. García, 2018) So, for honest beekeeping to continue one must address the problem of honey fraud. One aspect of tackling this problem is honey adulteration tests; they are nowadays already doing different kind of tests to detect impure honey. The problem with this though is that anytime a new test method was developed, honey producers found a new way of cheating these tests. The same goes for new rules installed by the government or other entities, to recall they started to transship honey coming from China through third countries, ever since the honey tariffs on Chinese honey were introduced in the US (Lucy Kennedy, 2018). However, another problem could be that not every honey packer is even testing their honey for any impurities. Nevertheless, it is important to keep on testing honey to see if it is tainted, because it helps to reduce honey fraud. Another way to go about it, is sensitizing the customer, there is a big demand for honey, and if the consumer was conscious about this issue and would look out for small things like the origin of the product they are buying, they could help to reduce the amount of tainted honey in circulation. Looking out for the origin of honey is especially helpful since there are no offical labels, which indicate that authenticity tests were conducted. Moreover, the government or other institution could support local beekeepers financially or support them in another way.

To recapitulate, honey fraud is nowadays an increasing issue, that endangers the livelihood of honest beekeepers and in turn threatens the honeybee community. This matter needs to be addressed more by the government, the beekeepers themselves and also by the consumer, as honeybees are fundamental little workers in our ecosystem, without whom there would be noticeable consequences in the farming sector.

Sources:

Fraudulent honey: An international crisis no one is talking about – Pass the Honey. (2021). https://passthehoney.com/blogs/the-buzz/an-international-crisis-no-one-is-talking-about-fraudulent-honey

García, N. L. (2018). The Current Situation on the International Honey Market. Https://Doi.Org/10.1080/0005772X.2018.1483814, 95(3), 89–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/0005772X.2018.1483814

García, N., & Schwarzinger, S. (2020). Honey fraud. Food Fraud: A Global Threat with Public Health and Economic Consequences, 309–334. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817242-1.00019-1

Genersch, E. (2010). Honey bee pathology: Current threats to honey bees and beekeeping. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, 87(1), 87–97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-010-2573-8

Lucy Kennedy, B. K. (2018). Rotten | “Lawyers, Guns and Honey.” https://www.netflix.com/ch/title/80146284

Staff, J. (2013). ‘Project Honeygate’ Stings Alleged Anti-Dumping Duty Evaders | JOC.com. https://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/customs-regulations/united-states/‘project-honeygate’-stings-alleged-anti-dumping-duty-evaders_20130221.html