In a message dated 2/14/99 10:09:16 AM Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask]
(Stefan Stangaciu) writes:
 
>     I wonder what will happen then with all those beekeepers which do not
>  care so much about the honey's quality, but mainly about their income? I
>  believe they will go bankrupt IF they will replace not quickly their old
>  methodologies with the new "biological/alternative" ones
 
    That's a pretty serious and insulting charge you are leveling against
those of us who make our living from the bees......
 
     You'd better be clear that I CARE VERY MUCH about MY HONEY'S QUALITY!  I
produce some of the finest honey on earth and I am very proud of it. I am
careful to make sure that is is as pure as possible.
 
     BUT you are dreaming, if you think perfection is possible. And I must
work within the definition of possible.  An "organic" label on eastern US
honey is a joke, and I believe that is true in most other places as well.  My
bees gather from thousands of acres, and they have no respect for boundries.
Not only is there intense agricultural spraying (and those droplets float a
long ways; I've seen herbicide damage to plants that occurred miles from the
application), but there are public spray programs for mosquitoes, gypsy moths,
medflies, grasshoppers, etc. Perhaps I could get away from the direct effects
by moving up into the Blue Ridge Mountains, but then I get the filtering
effect of the mountains, taking acids and industrial pollutants from the
atmosphere. There is nowhere that is free of contamination. DDT has been found
in the tissues of animals in Antactica!
 
    There is no way to stop all this spraying. The best I can hope to do is to
monitor it and try to make sure that they comply with the label directions to
reduce the damage to the bees, by applications at times when bees are not
foraging in the area. I have managed to make some applicators pay closer
attention, but getting them cited and fined.
 
    Fortunately for the honey consumer, at least for insecticides, there is a
cleansing mechanism that helps a lot. Since honey is processed internally, and
bees who take in insecticide-contaminated nectar die, losing that contribution
to the whole, the resulting batch is purified. This effect is not present with
pollens, and many batches of pollen are found to be dangerously contaminated.
 
   This is a totally different issue than sugar feeding. Sugar feeding is
irrelevant here, no matter how the organic folks define it, because pure sugar
is simply energy, and feeding sugar does not add any residues, even if a trace
should somehow find its way into honey.
 
    Sure, I'd be glad to make "organic" honey, if it were possible.....  I
don't want to consume (or more important for my grandchildren to consume) a
cocktail of toxic chemicals, with unknown long-term effects. So I'll work to
reduce them where I can. But I cannot change the whole industrialized world.
 
    Any eastern US beekeeper (and most of those elsewhere, especially in the
industrialized areas of the world) who puts an "organic label on his honey has
got a lot of explaining to do to this skeptic. Most likely, he's either a
consumate liar with a good marketing technique, or he's badly self-deluded.
 
[log in to unmask]     Dave Green  Hemingway, SC  USA
The Pollination Scene:  http://users.aol.com/pollinator/polpage1.html
The Pollination Home Page:    http://www.pollinator.com
 
Jan's Sweetness and Light Shop    (Varietal Honeys and Beeswax Candles)
http://users.aol.com/SweetnessL/sweetlit.htm