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Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey

144K views 557 replies 46 participants last post by  John Smith 
#1 ·
I've found this article just recently, and many facts surprised me.

For example:
"•76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

•100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

•77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.

•100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had the pollen removed. "

From: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/#.UQ1sbh3m1n5


Boris Romanov
 
#366 ·
I know my question got lost in the shuffle, but I am very interested if someone could answer this question for me,
maybe I missed it along the way,

I have often wondered how the pollen get into the honey naturally,

Does the bee ingest the pollen while taking up the nectar or is the pollen accidentally dusted into the honey cells while the bees walk over head,.?
I know the beekeeper has alot to do with the addition of pollen as they extract the honey from the frames.
So, in the context of natural, what % of pollen in the honey would need to be present to qualify as HONEY, as some are suggesting here?
 
#372 ·
I have often wondered how the pollen get into the honey naturally,
Here is an explanation of how pollen gets into honey:
Pollen can be incorporated into the honey produced in a beehive in a number of ways. When a honeybee lands on a flower in search of nectar, some of the flower's pollen is dislodged and falls into the nectar that is sucked up by the bee and stored in her stomach. At the same time, other pollen grains often attach themselves to the hairs, legs, antenna, and even the eyes of visiting bees. Later, some of the pollen that was sucked into her stomach with the nectar will be regurgitated with the collected nectar and deposited into open comb cells of the hive. While still in the hive the same honeybee might groom her body in an effort to remove entangled pollen on her hairs. During that process pollen can fall into open comb cells or the pollen can fall onto areas of the hive where other bees may track it into regions of the hive where unripe honey is still exposed in open comb cells.

http://www.scirpus.ca/cap/articles/paper017.htm
And, :eek: OMG :eek:, bees themselves filter pollen out of honey! :eek:

The honeybee's filtering process, as described by Snodgrass and Erickson (1992) is rapid and effective. The bee sucks nectar into a slender tube that ends in the bee's abdomen where it becomes an enlarged thin-walled sac called the honey stomach. This thin-walled sac is greatly distensible and can expand to hold large amounts of nectar. Once in the honey stomach, the nectar flows over the proventriculus which serves as a regulatory apparatus that filters and controls the entrance of food into the bee's stomach. The anterior end of the proventriculus, also called the honey stopper, projects into the bee's honey stomach like the neck of a bottle and at its anterior end is an x-shaped opening consisting of four, thick, triangular-shaped, muscle-controlled lips. The nectar in the honey stomach is drawn back and forth into the funnel-shaped proventriculus where it is filtered to remove debris such as pollen grains and the fungal spores of foul brood.

http://www.scirpus.ca/cap/articles/paper017.htm
:ws:
 
#368 ·
Wow. Nineteen pages of posts, and I don't know that much of anything has been established. I started reading the thread because the title implied that something other than a product made by bees was being fraudulently passed off as honey. As deknow stated a bit earlier in the thread, I presumed that HFCS was being labeled "honey" and sold as such. That doesn't seem to be the case.

In the meantime, the thread seems to have gone to some quite accusatory tones (naming companies and insinuating that the products they produce are not as they are labeled). While it has been pointed out that the USDA uses a definition of honey that covers a range of things, no one else has been able to offer a clear, personal definition of "honey," other than some claiming it is distinct from "processed honey." I know it's difficult to define such a thing. A bit earlier in this thread, I posted:

Honey that comes off from a legume flow -- such as predominantly clover -- is decidedly different than mixed wildflower honey is different than buckwheat honey is different than honeydew honey (which, by the way, should almost certainly have no pollen naturally in it). All are "honey." All are chemically different. Therefore, "honey" must cover quite a range. The moisture content varies, the floral sources vary, the amounts of pollen if any vary, the pH varies, and none of it might be consistent even within a hive from one day to the next. -Kieck
Regarding crystallization and when it occurs, as others have pointed out, honey from some floral sources does not seem to crystallize over extended periods of time. Honey from others does. I've had bees make honey from honeydew. It crystallizes so quickly in the comb that it makes me wonder if it doesn't crystallize in the bees' honey crops on their way back to the hives. Quite a range of things in "honey."

And for the record, last time (a couple years ago) Boris asked me to "prove" I actually have bees, I told him to contact the state apiarist's office and confirm it with them. I PMed Boris the name of the state apiarist here and the registration records for the state, and I invited him to come visit and see for himself. If anyone else feels they need such verification, please PM me and I will send you the same information. I fail to see how such things are germane to this discussion, and I don't care to post such information publicly, but I'll do my best to confirm that I have bees for anyone who cares so deeply about it.
 
#370 ·
So, in the context of natural, what % of pollen in the honey would need to be present to qualify as HONEY, as some are suggesting here? -Ian
I'm interested, too, Ian. I've searched for such things in the past and again during this discussion. The few labs that do such tests all seem to hold that information quite close to the vest. Maybe it's so that people can't simply add pollen to syrup to pass it off as "honey?" The best I can say is that it seems to be a range of values, but what that range is, I do not know.

I suspect that some pollen ends up in nectaries within flowers just by the sloppy nature of insect pollination. Plants rely on such "sloppiness" to pass pollen from one flower to the next. If bees carefully packed pollen and took it all away, the pollen would fail to serve its purpose for the plants. It's that general brushing and dusting of pollen all over the bee and to different parts of the flower that accomplish transfers of pollen -- i. e. pollination.

Of course, if a beekeeper extracts a frame of mostly honey with some cells of pollen mixed in, that pollen will add to the pollen levels in the honey.

As I pointed out earlier, in an instance of bees storing relatively pure honeydew "honey" (I don't know, does it still qualify as "honey" if it doesn't come from floral sources? It's natural, bees do it on occasion, but it's different than the usual "honey" that most folks think of), I would expect no pollen from the source of the carbohydrates. Any pollen in those cases must be contaminants, I would think.
 
#373 ·
Some years, clouds of pollen are blowing from spruce trees here while dandelions are blooming. I imagine some of that spruce pollen must wind up in honey, too.

I agree: different shapes of flowers and different sizes of pollens must mean that some are more prone to getting into honey.
 
#374 ·
Dandelion pollen is especially interesting, as they mostly reproduce asexually. Pollen and nectar must be produced at a tremendous cost by the plant...the occasional fertilization must either be worth it, or there are other benefits for a plant to be visited by insects that make this profitable for the flower.

deknow
 
#377 ·
Dandelion pollen is especially interesting,
My favorite flower, the Dandelion !
my kids get funny looks when they tell people that. My kids dont understand why people hate dandelions,.? So young and innocent, they have not been corrupted by the silliness of society

I agree, all the pollen and nectar available is a tremendous cost to the plant, at what cost?
Got to look at the time that plant grows, early to mid spring. Lots of moisture, lots of nutrients, lots of sunshine. The plant exploits the abundance it grows in
and the bees exploit the plants abundance , got to love nature
 
#376 ·
I raised a pretty large quantity of honeydew this past summer. A pollen analysis showed only a small amount of sweet clover pollen ( remants of an earlier flow) and a local weed in the daisy family. The "honey" is very dark (70+ mm) and has yet to granulate. its obviously not clover honey and qualifies as honeydew only because the scenario fits and it dosent qualify as anything else. Given the logic of some on here it's honey since it does contain some pollen. Soooo honey??? Yes? No? If not what and why?
 
#379 ·
What is the industry going to do about Ultra Filtered honey? In my eye this is the real issue. This honey is being watered down, heated and then sent through very fine filters to remove contaminates in the honey and then brought back to its original state.

Is there a way of identifying this stuff?

or perhaps is the only way for the consumer to avoid ultra filtered honey is to buy from packers who qualify their honey with documentation ,.?
 
#381 ·
Ian: In addition to testimg for adulterants I think about the only logical answer (and it dosent solve the entire problem) is that all raw, bulk honey sales should contain pollen. There is no logical reason why someone would filter it out of raw honey. Of course that is where all the confusion that reigns on here originally came from. It was a fatally flawed report from a reporter that didn't fully research his subject matter. Sigh! According to Ryan corrections were later made but so much mis-information has persisted that we still end up threads such as this about an article written a year and a half ago.
 
#382 ·
We don't even have a good working definition of honey....how can we define raw honey? I get asked all the time "what makes this honey raw", my answer always starts with, "there is no legal definition for the term, and different people use it different ways..."

Deknow
 
#383 ·
I am not asking for a legal definition Dean. Call it unfiltered, extracted honey if using the term raw bothers you. It is the state at which virtually 100% of honey is in that is sold to the businesses that repackage and market honey. To filter it is expensive, time consuming and degrades the color. There is no logical reason, that I know of, for any of it to be filtered in any way at that stage unless someone is trying to hide its origin which is exactly the reason this whole issue ever reared it's ugly head.
 
#384 ·
One beesource contributor has shared the experience of wholesaling barrels of honey to a food manufacturer (this was largely "raw" honey in the drum that he had purchased for resale) who sent the same barrels back to him several times for liquefying...it is not true that there is no reason to filter honey....I don't want it, but many do.

Deknow
 
#385 ·
I was under the impression that the off shore honey was being Ultra filtered to remove antibiotic residues and heavy metal contamination. They are telling me micron filters ,.? ( I was not aware it was possible up til these last couple of years ) And I guess on a side benefit to them they would also make the honey untraceable to its origin.
 
#386 ·
Jim, what was the source of the Dew? Aphids or naturally occuring seeping? As to carrots, why is everyone thinking there's no nectar? Ever seen a carrot bloom? Huge umbels, quite smelly though, not a ton of nectar, but if you were to rub your hand over it, it would get sticky.
 
#392 ·
Ian,

How you can explain the NHB's statement, that I mentioned in my post #380

And what is your opinion about these two big Packers:
http://www.suebee.com/?q=node/32
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDtClXCM1_I

And how about this:
“Huser said the Sioux Honey Association and other producers shun ultra-filtration in favor of a more traditional, much less aggressive technique, called macro filtration, to remove bee parts, wax and other debris from the hive.
"When we do that, we incidentally remove most (!!!) of the pollen," he said.”…
According to the Food Safety News story, Sue Bee Honey "declined repeated requests for comments on ultra-filtration, what Sue Bee does with its foreign honey and whether it's ultra-filtered when they buy it."
http://siouxcityjournal.com/busines...cle_b9e659dd-84f0-55f0-99d8-42f754760d83.html
 
#388 ·
Pinpointing source of honeydew can be difficult, I think. The experience that I had with it was from large infestations of aphids on ash trees. At least, that was the most abundant source of honeydew in the area that I could find. I'm curious, too, Jim, if you tracked down a source?

I did pull up the definitions of honey used by the USDA. You can read them for yourselves here:

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3011895

Seems to me that filtering out pollen and other suspensions actually moves honey up the grade scale. Bear in mind that I'm not advocating one way or the other here, just stating the way that I read the standards.
 
#391 ·
Pinpointing source of honeydew can be difficult, I think. The experience that I had with it was from large infestations of aphids on ash trees. At least, that was the most abundant source of honeydew in the area that I could find. I'm curious, too, Jim, if you tracked down a source.
We called it Honeydew only through the process of elimination. There was simply nothing else in bloom. It was in hilly pasture ground that had a lot of clover blooming early that quickly dried up in the drought. We took off the clover honey, put an empty super back on and were planning on moving all the bees out of the area. Before we got around to it we noticed that the boxes were filling up with a very dark honey. We thoroughly (we thought) drove around the area looking for a possible source but there was nothing to be seen but brown drought stressed pasture. There were however a lot of cedar and scrub oak trees in the valleys that I never even considered looking at. After several samples gave us no pollen clues we were left with the possible, and plausible, scenario that insects desperate for water had bored into these trees releasing the honeydew sap. It made sense the more I read about the nature of the flow. It was never heavy, never had excited roaring bees in the air just a slow steady approximately 2 pound a day daily gain. Many hives filled up 2 mediums in something over a month. One of the more remarkable beekeeping experiences I have ever seen.
 
#393 ·
Really neat, Jim. I've watched bees (not mine) collecting honeydew from corn leaf aphids in a heavily infested corn field. I've tasted honey that I was told came from honeydew from aphids on pine trees (I have no reason to doubt that it did).

From the honeydew "flow" that I experienced, it was fairly short lived. Not much else was in bloom for about two weeks, and the bees brought it in at the time. As soon as other flowers started blooming, the bees seemed to switch back to floral sources. Maybe the bees needed pollen sources again as much or more than they needed carbohydrates? Maybe collecting nectar was easier or more efficient than collected honeydew?
 
#394 ·
Boris, your a NUT

Leave the names of packers out of your crazy theories

>>>>there are bee farms that produce 2/3 of the annual honey production in North America by force feeding their bees high fructose corn syrup or other sugars, and keeping them under 24-hour hive lighting so that they will produce honey year round (the remaining 1/3 of honey produced in N.A. is pure honey)<<<<


Your absolutely NUTS
 
#395 ·
...Leave the names of packers out of your crazy theories
So, who are you - a misinformer?...

In fact this not my statement and not my theories: "“Huser said the Sioux Honey Association and other producers shun ultra-filtration in favor of a more traditional, much less aggressive technique, called macro filtration, to remove bee parts, wax and other debris from the hive.
"When we do that, we incidentally remove most (!!!) of the pollen," he said.”…
According to the Food Safety News story, Sue Bee Honey "declined repeated requests for comments on ultra-filtration, what Sue Bee does with its foreign honey and whether it's ultra-filtered when they buy it."
http://siouxcityjournal.com/business...754760d83.html
 
#396 ·
How you can explain the NHB's statement, that I mentioned in my post #380... -Boris
I'm not sure that the article linked and quoted (found here: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/...-is-made-from-nectar-not-pollen/#.UR00aGihBSV) is really a statement by the NHB.

However, I think "producers" are being confused with "packers" in some of the posts on this thread.

The beekeepers who pull the honey off of their hives are the "producers."

The companies that bottle and distribute the liquid honey are the "packers."
 
#397 ·
A few years back I used to help an old neighbor with his bees. A commercial guy stopped by one day to visit and gave us a four gallon bucket of carrot honey. It was one of the worst things I have ever tasted in my life. We ended up pitching it in the garbage.
 
#400 ·
As a friendly piece of advice, Boris, you've stuck your neck out on this thread with some of the insinuations and allegations that you've leveled against a particular business. If you have evidence to back it up, it's time to present it, I think. Otherwise, you might consider moderating your comments and/or avoiding naming specific individuals/businesses in your posts.
 
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