Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey

Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins

by Andrew Schneider | Nov 07, 2011

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.

BUG GUIDE
with a clickable guide
More than just a clearinghouse for information, this site helps expand on the natural histories of our subjects. By capturing the place and time that submitted images were taken, we are creating a virtual collection that helps define where and when things might be found.
check it out!

Here is the URL for my new Bee-Hive Mind Redux  http://zarafsbee-hivemindredux.blogspot.com/


Please leave me a msg there until I can work all this out ----

How to get to your list of posts

Google describes it this way:
Viewing your posts: The gray Post List icon will take you to a list of your published and drafted posts for a specific blog.

When it would be better described as  "Grey Blogger Logo" on right top corner of page will take you into your list of posts.
 

Zarafa's Bee-Hive Mind

Using our upgraded interface

Along with several other Google products, Blogger’s taken on a whole new look: A clean, sleek interface designed for a streamlined blogging experience. Not only does the new interface load faster, but we’ve also added shortcuts to your most important blogging actions. Check out our quick list of what’s changed below. "Google."


Well after getting stuck in the new interface I am not sure that I want  A clean, sleek interface designed for a streamlined blogging experience. Google must have hired a mad Madison Ave type and I have the Mad Avenue Blues     video
the interface in a word (or two) is a sad empty sterile environment --- come on Google what is going on!!!!!!!!!

Zarafa's Bee-Hive Mind is on the move !!!

It seems to me that Google is trying to corral the blog community into the new interface
as it has become very difficult to post and to see the pages on the back -end to edit --- so I plan to move
not to change this blogs layout --- I have been blogging on this site since about 2008 and
the same for my "Green!" site --- which I did try the new interface and lost a lot of wonderful
information, videos etc, --- although the new interface offers a few different layouts -- it takes a new
approach and figuring out --- but I am willing to have a go!

So Please visit me on zarafa's bee-hive mind redux
I will post my problems here on this blog 

Guardian Article

Action - not research is needed to save our pollinators

Zarafa's Bee-Hive Mind

Google has made some kind of error with their new interface which makes it impossible for me to add article -- Thanks for coming to  Zarafa's Bee-Hive Mind -- I hope to resolve this and start posting again

Asian Honey, Banned in Europe, Is Flooding U.S. Grocery Shelves

FDA has the laws needed to keep adulterated honey off store shelves but does little, honey industry says.

by Andrew Schneider | Aug 15, 2011

A third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals.  A Food Safety News investigation has documented that millions of pounds of honey banned as unsafe in dozens of countries are being imported and sold here in record quantities. 

And the flow of Chinese honey continues despite assurances from the Food and Drug Administration and other federal officials that the hundreds of millions of pounds reaching store shelves were authentic and safe following the widespread arrests and convictions of major smugglers over the last two years. Read article at Food Safety News.

By Dr. Mercola (link)

Honeybees are perhaps one of the least recognized workers in the agricultural industry. They contribute $15 billion in annual agriculture revenue to the U.S. economy alone, as a full one-third of the U.S. food supply depends on them pollinating crops.
Apple orchards, for instance, require one colony of bees per acre in order to be adequately pollinated. So, unless the mysterious disappearance of bees is reversed, major food shortages could result.
This is not a brand new issue.
For several years now, scientists have been struggling to determine why bee colonies across the world are disappearing—a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD). In a series of reports and videos, PBS talks about the bee colony devastation and its impact on the food supply and U.S. agriculture.
For a great review, please watch the PBS episode, Silence of the Bees.

Also watch the full episode. See more Botany of Desire.

Silence of the Bees
Video: Full Episode

In the winter of 2006, a strange phenomenon fell upon honeybee hives across the country. Without a trace, millions of bees vanished from their hives, leaving billions of dollars of crops at risk and potentially threatening our food supply. The epidemic set researchers scrambling to discover why honeybees were dying in record numbers — and to stop the epidemic in its tracks before it spread further. You can watch then purchase the DVD from PBS at their site.

Bees in the hood: urban beekeeping in the Queen City

Liz Tilton stands in a Northside backyard garden and holds a wooden stick with an upside-down arch of bee comb dangling from it.

Bees: amazing little creatures

One of the first articles I posted on this blog Zarafa's Bee-Hive Mind, was in April of 2007, about the ability of bees to recognize human faces. A World Science news item dated December 9, 2005 reports Adrian Dyer's study published in Journal of Experimental Biology, Honey Bees Can Recognize Human Faces!

"Scientists used to believe that facial recognition required a large brain. Adrian G. Dyer of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, a leading scientist in the field feels that this may not be the case. He found in his study on honey bees that even with a smaller brain than that of the humans, they could recognize human faces. According to Dyer the finding is the first time an invertebrate has shown ability to recognize faces of other species."
 
Bees are the most amazing little creatures, busy buzzing around, taking bundles of pollen on their little furry legs, around their knees, from that the expression "Like the bees knees" came I suppose! So they go from flower to flower and without them the plants would not be pollinated and bare fruit --- 

Our fruit and vegetables are highly contaminated with pesticides, the EWG  at this link you can get a down loadable list of highly toxic foods. The most toxic. Although it is best to eat organic produce whenever you can it is not always possible and there was an article in WSJ telling that --

The apple industry faces a potential public-relations headache in the wake of federal testing that found pesticide residues in 98% of America's second-most-popular fresh fruit, the highest rate among the produce screened by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a yearly survey.

The last part of the article says the following about our little friends. "The World Science report adds: "The bees probably don’t understand what a human face is, Dyer said in an email. “To the bees the faces were spatial patterns (or strange looking flowers). Bees are famous for their pattern-recognition abilities, which scientists believe evolved in order to discriminate among flowers. As social insects, they can also tell apart their hive mates. But the new study shows that they can recognize human faces better than some humans can—with one-ten thousandth of the brain cells." 

Bravo little friends without you we are lost.

I appreciate the comments of thanks and gratitude from readers who come by this and any other zarafa sister sites of which, I must admit there are many, and who appreciate the collection of articles stored in one place  --- I do them as a repository, a place to keep important information, rather than putting it in my bookmark file.The bee issue is really dire and must be addressed in a profoundly pragmatic way. 
I will always be eternally grateful to Google for giving us this fabulous tool. 

vanishing of the bees

Vanishing of the Bees - Trailer from Bee The Change on Vimeo.

AfricaNews - MALAWI: Fishermen catching bees - The AfricaNews articles of FRAZER POTANI

AfricaNews - MALAWI: Fishermen catching bees - The AfricaNews articles of FRAZER POTANI:

"Fishermen elsewhere on the planet are associated with canoes, boats, water and nets and of course fish catching. But due to low fish catches as a result of rising human population and fishing practices unfriendly to the environment in Lake Malawi, some fishermen in Nkhata Bay District, about 50 Km from Mzuzu (Malawi's major city in the northern region) are harvesting bees.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

The ABC's of Bees

The ABC's of Bees:

"ASk ANy SCHOOL CHILD “WHAT DO BEES DO?” and he or she will most likely answer “Bees make honey.” That is certainly true, but only for honey bees. Even more important than making honey is that bees pollinate plants. Only honey bees make honey. Now firmly established across the continent, the popular honey bee is not a native bee, but was brought to America by European settlers 400 years ago. Its full name is the European Honey Bee.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

IMPACT OF NEONICOTINOID PESTICIDES ON BEES AND OTHER INVERTEBRATES: EDM 1267

IMPACT OF NEONICOTINOID PESTICIDES ON BEES AND OTHER INVERTEBRATES: EDM 1267:

"The EDM acknowledges the report by Buglife (2009) (1) which concludes that our regulatory system is inadequate for the assessment of this group of pesticides.

Indeed, there is significant and serious doubt that these pesticides are safe, yet I am aware of a number of erroneous arguments opposing this motion:


1. The Buglife report, 2009 has been examined by the Advisory Committee on Pesticides/DEFRA . Given the evidence, there is no need to change the system that regulates pesticides.

a. The Advisory Committee on Pesticides have examined the Buglife report (2).

This document appears to completely ignore very relevant (and difficult/impossible to refute) data contained within the Buglife report.

It actually fails to address the key points made and instead, focuses on scenarios primarily concerned with ‘mistakes’ made during application, or what they consider to be “unlikely” scenarios (without justifying how they came to these conclusions).

Additionally, they have not justified why or how they can consider the regulatory system to be acceptable, when it fails to require sensitive and specific data that: Read further at Buzz About


- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Honey laundering: The sour side of nature’s golden sweetener - The Globe and Mail

Honey laundering: The sour side of nature’s golden sweetener - The Globe and Mail:

"None of this is on the label. Rarely will a jar of honey say “Made in China.” Instead, Chinese honey sold in North America is more likely to be stamped as Indonesian, Malaysian or Taiwanese, due to a growing multimillion dollar laundering system designed to keep the endless supply of cheap and often contaminated Chinese honey moving into the U.S., where tariffs have been implemented to staunch the flow and protect its own struggling industry.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Michael McCarthy: BBKA oligarchy has buried the truth in its cosy relationship with the pesticide lobby - Commentators, Opinion - The Independent

Michael McCarthy: BBKA oligarchy has buried the truth in its cosy relationship with the pesticide lobby - Commentators, Opinion - The Independent:

"This is something which may skew judgement. One of the claims in the open letter sent to the association by independent beekeepers is that 'the BBKA appears never to have issued any public statement that is critical of any pesticides or pesticide manufacturer'. That's a sweeping statement, but it's certainly the case, if you leaf through BBKA News, that pesticides are not viewed as a major problem.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

WikiLeaks Uncovers Government Bee Killing Conspiracy | Animals | Change.org

WikiLeaks Uncovers Government Bee Killing Conspiracy | Animals | Change.org:

Please Sign the Petition

"- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Is a Renowned Honeybee Scientist in Bayer's Pocket? | Sustainable Food | Change.org

Is a Renowned Honeybee Scientist in Bayer's Pocket? | Sustainable Food | Change.org:

A joint study between the military and scientists concluded that a virus-fungus combo could be what's sending bees to their graves. But as Fortune recently reported, this study might not be all it's cracked up to be. Montana bee researcher, Jerry Bromenshenk, served as lead author of the study pinpointing the virus-fungus duo. Bromenshenk serves as CEO of a company that produces sensors to detect bee diseases, and he also received a hefty grant from Bayer, a leading pesticide producer. Uh oh, Bromenshenk — the buzz is that your study could be biased.

"- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Blackawton bees — Biology Letters

Blackawton bees — Biology Letters:

LONDON – It came with wobbly writing and hand-drawn diagrams, but an elementary school science project has made it into a peer-reviewed journal from Britain's prestigious Royal Society.

Biology Letters published a report Wednesday conducted and written by a group of 8- to 10-year-olds from an English elementary school investigating the way bumblebees see colors and patterns. The scientific organization — which is more than three centuries old and includes some of the world's most eminent scientists — said the children reported findings that were a "genuine advance" in the field of insect color and pattern vision.

"- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Genetic breakthrough in fight against honeybee killer | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Genetic breakthrough in fight against honeybee killer | Environment | guardian.co.uk:

"A breakthrough in the battle against a deadly mite responsible for decimating the honeybee population has been welcomed by conservation groups.

The varroa mite is the biggest killer of honeybees and has become resistant to medication developed to destroy it. But now scientists have identified a genetic technique that could stop the mite in its tracks.

Researchers from the government's National Bee Unit and Aberdeen University have worked out how to 'silence' natural functions in the mites' genes.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Landing lights for bees - how Snapdragon flowers got their stripes | infonews.co.nz New Zealand's local news community

Landing lights for bees - how Snapdragon flowers got their stripes | infonews.co.nz New Zealand's local news community: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

What a scientist didn't tell the NY Times on honeybee deaths - Oct. 8, 2010

What a scientist didn't tell the NY Times on honeybee deaths - Oct. 8, 2010:

A cheer must have gone up at Bayer on Thursday when a front-page New York Times article, under the headline "Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery," described how a newly released study pinpoints a different cause for the die-off: "a fungus tag-teaming with a virus." The study, written in collaboration with Army scientists at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center outside Baltimore, analyzed the proteins of afflicted bees using a new Army software system. The Bayer pesticides, however, go unmentioned.


"- Sent using Google Toolbar"