Honey: An Origin Story, Part 3

Today, we’re going to look at the wild world of contemporary honey production! In order to do that without a 4th part, I’m skipping over everything in between what we’ve already covered and what we’re doing today. Fun fact: it requires the life’s work of 12 bees to make only a single teaspoon of honey!

There are a bunch of different ways to maintain an apiary, but the standard these days is the Langstroph Hive, developed in 1852. This is made possible by earlier studies in that century about how hives were constructed in nature by François Huber, who made incredible study of this and developed the moveable Leaf Hive. It is the inspiration Langstroph experienced during his examination of the Leaf Hive that made him aware that there were options on how to build hives with removable sections without it being so dangerous.

This is the Leaf Hive, also called the Huber Hive. As you can see, it opens like a book.

Contemporary adaptation of a Leaf Hive. I rather like this one.

Langstroph checks out this new leafy system and thinks, “wait now. I bet I can improve upon this genius!” That’s what geniuses do, I suppose, same as the rest of us! That reminds me, in an off topic-ish sort of way, that there’s this really cool book about the origins of storytelling that y’all might like. It’s written by Brian Boyd, and I am mostly reminded of it because storytelling and information sharing is so influential in technological development of all kinds, including those related to apiculture.

As Langstroph monkeys with his design for a new hive, he eventually is like, “what what?” I can stack ‘em!” Like upscale food. So what happens is he separates the queen at the bottom so she’s not disturbed when these sections of comb and honey are removed from the hive (important if you want to keep your bees instead of having them swarm), and our sterile little ladies (the workers) have all the access to the other spaces. Drones basically could do what they wanted, including visiting other hives and impregnating other queens (as is still the case in basically all hives). That’s how they roll. The simplicity of this design, its ease of use, and the fact that you can DIY this jazz makes the Langstroph Hive still a big hit amongst many beekeepers.

Here is what the components are like, with the queen at the bottom.

Langstroph hives!

With people involved.

There are other kinds of hives, but we’re going to ignore those since the Langstroph is the most popular globally. From here, beekeeping doesn’t change drastically until comb honey becomes popular in the 20th-century. Producing section or comb honey (same thing, different names) is much more difficult than producing regular honey, which accounts for the massive price differences. People evidently have the following choices, when producing comb honey:

a. Traditional cut sections of comb honey: wooden frames with comb foundation or starter strips.
b. Foundationless Frames
c. Round combs produced with plastic equipment with or without comb foundation: Ross Round Sections
d. Pre-waxed plastic square sections: Hogg Cassettes
e. Wooden sections, usually sections are square and made from the finest basswood.
f. Romanov Comb Sections
g. Unwaxed plastic frames with rectangular sections:Bee-O-Pac System

In all the sources I read, I saw nothing as comprehensive and easy to go through as the link posted above, so I think it makes the most sense for any of you who’re interested in learning more about comb honey production to read this link rather than for me, the not-expert, to summarize it.

Comb honey. Hunter Trahan/Getty

In America, honey production is on the decline. This is largely rooted in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which appears to be affecting the States more than any other nation. No one yet knows with certainty what causes CCD, and it is likely that a number of factors are at play here. Other reasons for reductions in honey production include pest-driven infections and parasites (mites are particularly bad on this front, infecting bees with diseases similarly to how mosquitoes do with humans and other animals), other pathogens, poor nutrition, and pesticides. Pesticides are a problem for pollinators, in general, as well.

In other nations, however, contemporary beekeeping is seeing a lot of innovation, such as in Ethiopia. Up until recently, Ethiopia focused on traditional hive methodologies, but are modernizing to increase output. Ethiopia produces about a quarter of all honey sold in Africa, 50k tonnes, and little by little, other continents are beginning to increase interest in Ethiopian honey as well. My transitioning to more contemporary apiculture, Ethiopia can harness one of its incredible resources to secure increased economic security for her people. Ethiopia is working hard to increase its economic status to lower-middle income by 2025, and apiculture is an important part of this primarily agricultural program.

The video below is problematic because it includes significant primitivizing, but I opted to use it because some of the footage is invaluable and the filmmaker’s decision not to do more substantive research before hopping on a plane provides an excellent educational opportunity. The filmmaker is surprised that in addition to using traditional hive methods, some beekeepers in Ethiopia were “do[ing] it our style, too” (5:22). For reference, there has been an institutional push toward greater economic security through modernized beekeeping practices in Africa since 2003, 14 years before this video was published. He does not recognize the types of boxes used at the coffee farm, which surprised me; these are topbar hives, which are extremely popular in Africa and a style I otherwise likely would not have covered at all in this post. Additionally, the filmmaker demonstrates a lack of knowledge about the relative dangers of different kinds of bees, which y’all already knew from part 1 of this series. That is hard to blame him for, though, because we all remember the murder hornet-like coverage Africanized bees were getting when they were first a thing. Lastly, it’s really disappointing that he failed to seek permission before he started monkeying around with the topbar hives. I cannot imagine he would have been cool with someone popping open his boxes without asking first! With all those caveats and concerns stated ahead of time, let’s watch the video!

Although there are a lot of nations that make a lot of honey, no one makes as much honey as the Chinese. They make a quarter of the global supply, which is around 500k tonnes annually.

There is always a lot of talk about how Chinese honey is bad, no one should use it, so forth. While it is absolutely true that honey in China is sometimes harvested too early and/or over-harvested, in addition to being dried by people/machines instead of bees, Chinese honey itself is usually not an issue. Interestingly, according to this 2016 article in Forbes, there have been reports of counterfeit honey since 1881! That’s some seriously early honey scamming!

The issue is that Chinese honey has the same sort of mafia-like situation that Italian extra-virgin olive oil does. As with olive oil, some producers and/or distributors significantly increase their profit margins by adulterating around 20% (it depends on the destination, as different nations report different percentages of adulteration discovered during honey testing) of exported Chinese honey. This is a serious problem. One of the easiest ways to tell if the honey you’re considering buying is adulterated is by looking at the price. HFCS and regular corn or rice syrup are substantially cheaper than honey is, so if the little bear is wicked cheap, it’s probably adulterated. If your extra-virgin olive oil is wicked cheap, it’s also probably adulterated. Important things to know when shopping!

If your honey bear cost $2 and came with honey in it, it’s not all honey in there. It’s worth noting that from most countries of origin (real or purported), testing honey is not mandated by federal law, so the price is the best indicator if you’re not buying local honey. This is also why local honey costs so much more - you’re paying its actual price rather than the price of honey infused or flavored syrup.

Anyway, as with hacking, every new manner of detecting adulterated honey is met with new technology and techniques to disguise its practice. So in reality, although we can estimate around 20% of tested honey from this region will show signs of adulteration, there’s presumably more out there that can’t be or otherwise isn’t detected. One of the means of escaping detection is to ultra-filter honey to remove all pollen. By doing so, you really can’t trace origin, and that’s very helpful in avoiding detection if honey is being distributed from a nation outside its country of production. There are also different syrups that can be used that are harder to detect in testing than others.

My argument here is that it’s not a given place of origin that matters in determining if a specific brand of honey is or isn’t a good buying choice, but rather if you can see evidence (such as price or pale coloration that can’t be explained by its purported flower source) that it may have been. One thing that should be noted is that although you’re generally not going to see a Chinese origin label on a bottle of honey in the States, there’s also a widespread honey laundering system that allows adulterated honey to first be filtered into other nations, and then goes on to nations where the shipment might otherwise be refused. There is also a lot of harm done to American beekeepers due to cheap “honey” being dumped into our market. The word “dumping” is what this is actually called, because these products are sold below the market rate for honey, which makes it harder for people selling actual honey to make a living. There’s legislation in the States and other nations called “anti-dumping laws,” as well. All of that said, the day I chance upon access to Chinese honey I believe to be unadulterated, I should like to try it.

This is Hawaiian kaiwe honey, which I have never tried also really want to. It is naturally this color.

I hope y’all enjoyed this series on honey as much as I enjoyed writing it! The last thing I want to tell y’all about is a North African pastry called m’semen. It’s kind of like a crepe, kind of like puff pastry, and all delicious. This recipe is pretty similar to how I learned to make them, and the author lists jam or nutella as optional foods to eat on or in them in lieu of honey. I learned this as a breakfast food exclusively eaten with honey, so that’s how I’ve made and eaten them in the past. These are a pain to make, so I don’t do it often, but it is soooo worth the trouble. I’m going to be trying these with jam and nutella soon!

I’m closing with this song, as own my personal reward for not filling up these three posts with honey or bee-related songs like I wanted to!