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Labels: bees, food safety, grocery stores, Honey

Labels: bees, China, food safety, Honey

Backyard beekeeping is hot and cool at the same time — part environmental, part epicurean. A meditation on buzzing beauty. A path to nature, and to sweet pots of honey.

Maybe there’s a hive in your back lot, or a honeycomb fresh on your kitchen table.

Kim Flottum joins us from Kent, OH. He is editor of Bee Culture Magazine.

Jane Wild joins us in the studio. She is a ‘backyard beekeeper’ based in West Newbury, MA. She is also vice president of the Essex County Beekeepers’ Association. She has been keeping bees since 1991. She and her husband have 14 hives.

David Tarpy joins us from Durham, NC. He is one of the country’s top bee researchers –known more formally as an apiculturist and entomologist. He teaches and raises queen bees as part of his research at North Carolina State University. He is the official state judge of honey and hive products (honey, wax, mead) at the North Carolina state fair.

Labels: bees, Food, Honey, radio

...The nation’s great bee die-off has provoked a furious debate: What has caused a third of all commercial honeybee colonies to perish each year since 2006? Although widespread bee deaths have occurred before, the current sharp decline is different. This time some bees have simply vanished, abandoning their hives. The phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), has been attributed in part to the same viral and bacterial infections, pesticide poisonings, and mite infestations that devastated bees in the past.

Whatever the proximate cause, it increasingly appears that the bees are succumbing to a long-ignored underlying condition—inbreeding. Decades of agricultural and breeding practices meant to maximize pollinating efficiency have limited honeybees’ genetic diversity at a time when they need it the most. - Discover Magazine

Labels: bees, Colony Collapse Disorder, Honey, Science

Beginning today, when you buy honey in Florida you will get only honey.

No additives. No preservatives. No flavorings and nothing produced with chemicals. Just honey.

Florida has enacted what is being touted as the first regulation in the nation - and possibly in the world - requiring that any product that is produced, processed or sold in Florida as honey must be "natural food product resulting from the harvest of nectar by honeybees."

If the product includes sugar water, flavorings, antibiotics sprayed into hives to keep bees healthy or anything else that is not honey produced by bees, it cannot be sold as honey in Florida. - Gainesville.com

Labels: bees, Florida, Honey

Labels: Fancy Food, Flour, Foodies, gourmet food, Honey

Concealing discoveries of contaminated imported honey is immoral, unethical and often illegal -- and it happens far too often, U.S. honey producers say.

"It doesn't take a wizard to determine whether there are bad things in the honey we handle, nor a hero to do what it takes to keep it from our food supply," said Mark Brady, a Texas beekeeper who sits on the National Honey Board.

"If we buy Chinese honey, as we do far too often, we know it may contain chloramphenicol or some other antibiotic that is illegal in any food product," said Brady, who produces about a million pounds of honey a year. "To find it and not report it is criminal." - SeattlePI

Labels: bees, Chinese Imports, food safety, Honey

The almond industry, which has emerged over the last decade as one of the biggest and most profitable in California agriculture, depends on bees for pollination. And so every spring, fully 60% of the commercially kept honeybees in the United States -- more than 1 million hives -- are trucked to California's Central Valley to do their thing.

But what happens when one of the state's fastest-growing businesses depends on workers who are disappearing almost as quickly? That's what California's almond farmers are waiting to find out.

California produces almost 80% of the world's almonds, grossing more than $2 billion in 2007. The state's almond exports are more than twice the value of its wine exports.

While almonds have been growing into an agricultural powerhouse, bee populations have been dwindling. Most recently, plagued by a mysterious condition called Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, honeybee colonies across the country have been vanishing, abandoning perfectly good hives. Even after two years, no one yet knows why. Theories are many, but definite answers are few.

And though the source of the disease is a mystery, its potential effects are not -- at least when it comes to almonds. Because it's this simple: Without bees, there are no nuts. - Latte Times

In the long, flat valley where the nation's almonds grow, bee thieves are striking hard this winter, nabbing increasingly valuable hives from farmers' fields where bees are used to pollinate blossoming nut trees.

A few weeks ago, 180 of Hall's hives were lifted over a period of days, a bit of banditry he estimates cost him nearly $70,000 in lost bees, pollination fees and honey production. - Forbes

This month ice-cream makers go on the offensive. Häagen-Dazs is launching two new honey-themed flavors and labeling bee-dependent pints to help save the honeybee. A portion of the proceeds, up to $250,000, will go to geneticists, entomologists, and educators at the University of California at Davis and Pennsylvania State University who will research the causes of the bees’ decline, create stronger bees in the laboratory, and teach the public how to make their surroundings more bee friendly.

The two new flavors—Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream and Vanilla Honey & Granola frozen yogurt—are both delicious. The honey flavor is sharp without overwhelming the vanilla, and samples left in DISCOVER’s freezer vanished in record time. So next time you’re looking for a virtuous indulgence, think of the honeybees. - Discover

Labels: almonds, bees, California Agriculture, Colony Collapse Disorder, Honey, Ice Cream

Labels: bees, food supply, Honey

First we start with your choice of crust. Then we apply our famous hand rolled edge to keep the abundant portions in place and provide you a built-in dessert created with honey. Next, we pour on your choice of sauces and pile it high with the finest ingredients, then finally smother your "Pie" with selected cheeses.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation's most profitable.

A Cornell University study has estimated that honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the United States, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts. "Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food," said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

The bee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers consider a loss of up to 20 percent in the off-season to be normal. - SFGate

Labels: almonds, bees, colorado, Honey, pizza

New Mystery Ailment Devastates Honeybee Industry, Already Devastated by Mite Infestation
A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.

Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.

...The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.

Along with being producers of honey, commercial bee colonies are important to agriculture as pollinators, along with some birds, bats and other insects. A recent report by the National Research Council noted that in order to bear fruit, three-quarters of all flowering plants -- including most food crops and some that provide fiber, drugs and fuel -- rely on pollinators for fertilization.

Mid-Atlantic Apiculture

Penn State University Entomology Dept.

American Beekeeping Federation

Labels: Honey