As the world population passes 8,000,000,000 food security slips out of reach for many. How can we meet the need to feed everyone without encroaching evermore on nature’s wilderness? Beekeeping can help.
Fuata nyuki ule asali!
BzB Honey is gathered by an 80+ hive beekeeping association.
- Pure honey. Nothing added, nothing taken away, not blended from multiple sources.
- BzB’s bees range freely, gathering nectar from farm fields and unspoiled woodlands in the foothills of Kenya’s Western Highlands. They visit a wide variety of blossoms in season, not limited to vast monocultured fields.
- Smallholdings abound! They are organically managed without chemical pesticides, weedkillers or fertilisers.
- Unlike much of the honey imported from the Far East and Central America, it has not been adulterated with cheap corn syrup….. (see article below).
- ….nor is it heat-treated for filtration.
- A known provenance. Every jar is traceable to its apiary. No ‘Blend of EU and non-EU honeys’. Just what does that mean?
- BzB’s Lowland honeybees (Apis Mellifera Scutellata) favour savannah plants. Their Mountain Honeybees (Apis Mellifera Monticola) favour more upland plants.
- The bees do a great job fertilising local smallholders’ crops as they go – an invaluable help to them.
Sounds tasty? Call BzB on +254706 910349 or email bzbhoney@gmail.com
How pure is your honey?
Jon Ungoed-Thomas, The Guardian, 09-11-2024
Nine in ten honey samples from UK retailers fail authenticity test. Call for industry reform as latest results support belief that products are being bulked out with cheaper sugar syrup
The honey industry faces new demands to overhaul its supply chain after more than 90% of sampled products bought from large British retailers failed pioneering authenticity tests. The UK branch of the Honey Authenticity Network sent 30 samples last month from Britain for a novel commercial test based on the DNA profiles of genuine honey. Five were from UK beekeepers and 25 from big retailers, including supermarkets. The tests found that 24 out of the 25 jars of honey from retailers were considered suspicious. All five samples from UK beekeepers were considered to be genuine.
Honey importers in the UK and some experts challenge the reliability of such testing, but this is the latest batch of tests suggesting what may be widespread adulteration in the honey supply chain, with some products suspected of being bulked out with cheaper sugar syrup. The British Honey Importers and Packers Association (BHIPA) said a “weight of evidence” assessment must be used to safeguard the supply chain. It said the “vast majority” of UK-sold honey was of very high standard. An EU investigation published last year found 46% of imported sampled products were suspected to be fraudulent, including all 10 honey samples from the UK.
The EU is working on advanced testing techniques to detect honey fraud and has passed new legislation to provide improved labelling of country of origin on jars of honey. Lynne Ingram, a Somerset beekeeper and the chair of the Honey Authenticity Network UK, said: “The market is being flooded by cheap, imported adulterated honey and it is undermining the business of genuine honey producers. The public are being misinformed, because they are buying what they think is genuine honey.” The UK is one of the biggest importers of cheap Chinese honey, which is known to be targeted by fraudsters. Honey importers say supply chains and provenance are carefully audited, but there has been no consensus on how technical tests should be applied, or which are most reliable.
The Celvia research institute in Estonia, which is partly owned by the University of Tartu, developed its novel methodology for honey DNA test with support from the EU’s European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. The DNA composition of the honey is compared against a database of more than 500 genuine honeys, with about half of these from Estonia.Kaarel Krjutškov, director of the Celvia laboratory, said he considered the testing was robust, in the face of criticism from other experts that the honey database was not sufficiently comprehensive and that one test was not enough to establish adulteration. The Celvia analysis examines between 10m and 20m DNA sequences in honey samples, with machine learning used to detect deviations from profiles of authentic reference honeys. “It is surprisingly easy to distinguish between the fake and authentic products,” said Krjutškov. “It is a huge gap.”
How can beekeeping help climate change?
There is an immense temptation to increase farmland by felling natural woodland. The appetite of developed nations plays a major part in this. We consume great quantities of palm-oil, beef and corn. All of these need huge acreages of land. The developing nations meeting this demand have little incentive to husband the soil – when it’s exhausted it’s much quicker and cheaper to move on, cut down more forests for a quick timber payoff, plant crops anew and leave a barren dustbowl behind.
More demanding, but more sustainable, would be to increase the output of the farmland already claimed. Beekeeping is one part of that effort. A small part, but every little helps.
Golphat Wanyonyi leads the BzB beekeeping association. Rather than traditional log-hives, BzB use modern Langstroth hives which allow harvesting of honey without disrupting the bee colonies. That gives a much greater yield without harming our little allies.
Click the thumbnail pics below for more details…
BzB Start-up, Training and Support BzB gives new apiarists training and equips them with hives, and support.
BzB Harvesting and Marketing. BzB collects the honeycombs and separates the honey by manual centrifuge. It’s sold to local buyers.
Meet the community of BzB Apiarists.
BzB – Planting. BzB’s programme of tree planting ensures a wide range of blossoms for multifloral honeys. The busy bees help local farmers gather a richer harvest.
Bees are nature’s great survivors. Here are some amazing facts.
If you want to follow Golphat’s blog or to contribute in other ways too, just get in touch- bzbhoney@gmail.com or petersbed@aol.com Oh, and please please spread the word. Every little helps.
