California Poppy Sculpture, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.Alison's most recent post on Ithaca's Food Web highlights the movie Queen of the Sun, which is a wonderful commentary on the plight of the honeybee and the threat to pollination in the United States. I recommend Alison's post for an excellent summary of the film, and encourage you to think about the origins of your honey - most honey, it seems, contains pesticides (injected into hives to kill mites) and can contain high fructose corn syrup (given to industrial bees to stimulate honey production). If you care about these things, check out this film and think about the origins of your sweet treats.
I have done just a little bit of research into honey and found that Purest Honey Apiaries sells chemical and antibiotic-free honey, but I am overwhelmed by choices. So, I would appreciate any information or suggestions you readers may have!
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ReplyDeleteHoneybees are a really interesting topic. Chem and anti-biotic-free are REALLY difficult to find, since there are basically no honeybees at this point who can survive without help. Years of domestication on large scale has helped to make nosema and other parasites and diseases all but impossible for bees to survive on their own. It is so desperate at this point that bee-keepers eagerly will seek out the few "feral" bee colonies that still exist to try to coax out of those queens the genes that allow them to survive without the intervention of humans.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, one of the explanations proposed for the recent CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) outbreak is a new virus or parasite that inhibits the bee's ability to find it's way back to the hive.
Regardless bees are directly responsible for 1/3 of our food supply and indirectly responsible for another 1/3. No less a man than Albert Einstein prophesied that there was no greater danger to the human race than the demise of the honeybee.