Dear Lou,
I heard a rumor that honey is toxic when placed in hot water. Is that true? Doesn’t the whole world drink honey in hot tea? Also wondering about the harvesting of honey—is it harmful to the bees and their sustainability?
Honey Lover from Vermont
Dearest Honey Lover from Vermont,
I didn’t find any convincing studies on the toxicity of honey in water, but I did find this most interesting quote through an Internet search on the topic:
According to ayurveda, honey shoud [sic] should never to be used heated directly or
indirectly internally is it devolopes [sic] toxicity when heated, exept [sic] when performing basty (enema).
Who knew honey could be so versatile?
For a more credible answer to your question, I rang up Ross Conrad, a fellow Vermonter and author of Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture. He said the suggestion that honey becomes toxic in hot water is really not accurate.
“The idea is that heat destroys enzymes. And basically any time you are going to heat honey the enzymes are going to get destroyed and as a result dilute a lot of the medicinal value of the honey. Raw and unfiltered honey has incredible antibacterial and antifungal properties. It’s very, very healing in many ways.”
That said, there’s no evidence that heat-treated honey is actually toxic.
As for whether the whole world drinks honey in hot tea, I have no idea, but it’s certainly my favorite sore throat soother: mix honey with lemon, herbal tea and a couple jiggers of whisky and you’ll soon swallow with ease. (If you want a “basty,” recipe you’re on your own).
Speaking of the whole world, you’ve probably heard that our honeybees are disappearing. Forget Halloween, this is scary, because without them humankind is in for a big basty. Honeybees act as pollinators for many agricultural crops and are necessary for all of us to have something to eat. But due to colony collapse disorder, our striped friends are dying. There are many factors that lead to colony collapse disorder, but pesticides and industrial chemicals are thought to be key players. Unsustainable beekeeping practices can also play a role, and this is where your final question comes in.
If honey harvesting isn’t done correctly, it can harm bees. Beekeeping, says Conrad, is like any other form of farming—some ways are more sustainable than others.
“People who are managing their bees in a natural, organic fashion are only going to take the excess honey that the bees collect,” he told me. Short of taking all of their honey and making survival impossible, there are other bad things beekeepers can do. “A non-sustainable way [to keep bees] would be to take too much and try to feed them back sugar or corn syrup.” One can only imagine what kind of effect HFCS or other substances might have on bees.
In addition to poor harvesting methods, there are other honey production practices to worry about. Some beekeepers treat their bees against mites with toxic chemicals and antibiotics on a regular basis. This adds to the pesticide load bees are already carrying. Last year, researchers were shocked by the pesticide levels found in hives.
While you’d think buying organic honey might be the answer, truly organic honey is a rare find. Conrad told me that while it’s not so difficult to manage hives organically, making organic honey is hard because bees can fly to non-organic places and pick up pesticides.
“The hard part is finding a location that is going to be four or five miles from any crops that are sprayed or grown with artificial fertilizers, chemicals, pesticides, fungicides or any of that,” he said. “That means five miles in any direction.”
For more information about organic honey, check out this rather skeptical article.
To find a beekeeper who is using best practices, buy your honey locally at a farmers market or a farm stand. Talk to your local beekeepers about how they manage their hives.
“Or get your own bees. That would be ideal. We need more beekeepers,” says Conrad.
If you want to spread a little kindness to bees, Conrad advises avoiding chemicals in your daily life as much as possible and grabbing your garden gloves. By removing the monoculture known as your lawn and making a nice habitat for wildflowers, you’ll provide fodder for lots of natural pollinators, not just bees.
For more information about supporting bees, check out this sweet, funny video of Grist’s own Umbra Fisk taking it to the streets for bees.
In sum: Cool your cuppa chamomile before adding honey; find a local beekeeper; and, finally, make life nice for some bees. Because with friends like us, they don’t need enemas.
Er, enemies.
Lou
Battle for the soul of organic dairy farmers goes on behind the scenes
Comments
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shelleyshell Posted 5:47 pm
28 Oct 2009
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Tasermons Partner Posted 7:09 pm
28 Oct 2009
Non-native bee species aren't as specialized in pollinating native species of plants, and they can also crowd out or interbreed with native species, diluting the gene pool of native bees.
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Bud Dingler Posted 7:54 pm
28 Oct 2009
Tasermoms partner is uninformed as
native bees are not honey bees and therefore do not make any honey. honeybees was brought over by european immigrants.
CCD happened in 2006/07 and is OVER. Repeat after me its #$%#%ing OVER. bloggers and morons keep repeating the same theme over and over even though CCD was a one time event folks. whatever believe what you want to believe. its in the same league as this AGW bull. i can;t believe how long this myth has persisted that CCD is still an active problem. call any entomologist or beekeeper - CCD is OVER and has been for 2 years or more....sheesh.
I think where the idear that heat causes toxicity came from originates with HMF a chemical compound that forms when certain forms of sugar are heated.
here is an excerpt
"HMF (HydroxyMethylFurfuraldehyde) is used as an indicator of heat and storage changes in honey.
HMF is formed by the breakdown of fructose in the presence of an acid.
Heat increases the speed of this reaction.
The increase in speed is exponential with increasing heat.
HMF occurs naturally in most honeys and usually increases with the age and heat treatment of honey.
HMF's occurrence and accumulation in honey is variable depending on honey type.
While today HMF is used as an indicator of heating or storage at elevated temperatures, it was first used (as early as 1908) as an indicator of the adulteration of honey with invert syrups (syrups of glucose and fructose). Cane sugar (sucrose) is "inverted" by heating with a food acid, and this process creates HMF. However it was quickly realized that heated natural honey also had higher levels of HMF and therefore the interest switched from being an indicator of adulteration, to that of an indicator of heating and storage changes. It should be noted however that high levels of HMF (greater than 100 mg/kg) can still be an indicator of adulteration with inverted sugars.
It should be noted that HMF is not a harmful substance in levels found in food. Many sugar type products (e.g. Golden Syrup, Molasses etc.) have levels of HMF that are 10-100 times that of honey. Many food items sweetened with high fructose corn syrups, e.g. carbonated soft drinks, can have levels of HMF between 100 and 1,000 mg/kg."
from: http://www.airborne.co.nz/HMF.html
HMF is toxic to bees. I think it was mercola or naturalnews ranger one of those wellness eco-weasels who floated a story that HMF was toxic to humans.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:34 pm
28 Oct 2009
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/bees/honey-beekeeping-47102806
Another teabagger heard from, hehey.
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Bud Dingler Posted 4:15 am
29 Oct 2009
if you did not notice we never had a summer. most of the nations honey crop is made in July and we had record cold in the upper midwest where the 3 o 5 top honey producing states are located. it was also a dry spring and summer too so cold and dry means no flowers Boy.
generally hot and wet is the best weather for a big honey crop.
from what I see and hear most beeks have more hives then before the CCD 06/07 incident.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:23 pm
28 Oct 2009
Why couldn't bees be fed raw beet sugar over winter and allowed to feed on green house flowers? It would allow northern beekeepers to compete. northern forests and prairies are the only places left in the US where you could keep bees over 5 miles from chemical contamination.
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Bud Dingler Posted 4:27 am
29 Oct 2009
organic honey is a non event for the industry. the average beekeeper is 62 years old and its a tough business. we only produce about 40% domestic honey for what the country consumes. my point is if you are a beekeeper and are selling local raw honey you have no problem selling it at a premium. being certified would not be worth it since the lost production from being in marginal areas is not offset by maybe a 20% higher price. plus the cost of certification and long distance to an viable market is a further negative.
also for the most part my bees do not feed on lawns (no honey in grass) corn or soybeans. the bulk of my crop in the midwest is made from basswood trees and clover. neither of these forage sources are sprayed so most beekeepers feel that the organic standard is a sham. similar to organic maple syrup. how can they not be organic?
from what I see perusing the large certification house sites like QAI and Oregon Tilth there is less then a handful of certified organic honey producers in the USA. not even 2 dozen.
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Jeremy O'Wheel Posted 6:51 am
29 Oct 2009
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427316.800-the-truth-about-the-disappearing-honeybees.html
It's an opinion piece explaining research the authors had published in Current Biology (ie. peer reviewed scientific literature). They say that CCD is a short term phenomenon and not serious, that the number of bee hives has significantly increased rather than fallen over the last few decades, and that if all honey bees died out tomorrow, that the loss to food production would be about 5%.
Of course none of this is to say that we shouldn't worry about the health of honey bees in general, just that the current concerns about them are largely just media beat up and not supported by science.
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Bud Dingler Posted 12:28 pm
29 Oct 2009
I totally concur with your post. We have way too much fear mongering going on in this world already. I am really becoming annoyed with sloppy research by bloggers that apparently do a quick google search and go from there without any deeper digging or trying to understand the issue. Its like they have a preconceived idea that in this case its the end of the line for bees and then fill in the blank with something online that agree with that view.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 5:35 pm
05 Nov 2009
The common honeybee species were, yes. But that doesn't mean that native bees also didn't produce honey. Some do, though it's a different type of "honey" than their European counterparts. The consistency is different, and it's very hard to find beekeepers who use native species because (besides differences of output), some people don't like the taste (supposedly not as "sweet" as common honey), but I like it just fine.
And just so you know, nearly all species of "European" honeybees are actually native to Southeast Asia.
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