Bees and food production: chaos, corruption and dodgy honey
Laura Healy is a Teagasc PhD student and Walsh Scholar in Food Chemistry and Technology at TU Dublin, she writes about the 'Rotten' TV show's portrayal of how some of the bee-keeping industry operates.
The title of the first episode of Netflix's Rotten sounds more like a bad Western than a documentary profiling the biggest food fraud case in US history. With a nod to Warren Zevon, Lawyers, Guns and Honey is a bewildering clue to the episode's contents.
It quickly becomes apparent that honey doesn't just arrive on our shelves in a straight-forward process. Sparked by a growing market for honey, blending has became a booming business. Warehouses filled with drums of honey from all over the world to be mixed by experts to suit the taste and price preferences of their customer, such as bakeries or honey bottlers. The golden elixir passes through multiple hands after leaving the hive.
Tonnes of honey were imported from China to meet increased demand by sweet-toothed customers in the US. Not questioning the drastic price drop of the imported honey (which was two-thirds cheaper than domestic honey), Americans couldn’t get enough. Authorities soon began investigating the cheaper goods and discovered the honey had been diluted with cheap, sugar syrups. They developed ways of detecting corn syrups to counteract this, banning any products found to contain anything but pure honey.
In what escalated into a game of cat-and-mouse, the honey producers from China kept finding ways to evade detection. First, they switched their bulking syrup from corn to rice, which would not be detected by the US labs. When authorities caught onto this, they began testing pollen found in the honey, as a means of finding out the country of origin of the product. The Chinese honey producers punched back with a filtering process that allowed them to remove these microscopic particles from their products, leaving the honey untraceable.
US authorities then responded with towering tariffs on all honey imported from China. Not wanting to lose out on this lucrative new market, China avoided these tariffs by rerouting the fake honey through other Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, slapping a new label on the shipment. This scheme worked for a while, but it unravelled when US companies were found to be complicit. It all ended with five people jailed for being involved in knowingly selling dodgy honey and mislabelling products to be sold to American customers.
But it's not just the dodgy honey that leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths from watching Rotten. It’s the complete chaos and corruption of some of the bee-keeping industry. The reality is so strikingly stark from the little-house-on-the-prairie vibes we may imagine. As the name suggests, bee-keepers are in the bee-keeping business. They are supposed to make their money from honey, but this is not enough to pay the bills, according to those interviewed by Netflix.
To make up for their losses, they rent out their colonies for "pollination services" across the US. Their bee livestock could be shipped from one coast to the other to pollinate whatever is in season, as there are not enough pollinators in the wild to manage the enormous farms requiring pollination. This is a nice stream of income for the bee-keepers who can charge $200 per hive for the rental period, and many have hundreds of hives.
However, the living conditions of these insects while in transit across thousands of miles is questionable. The concentration of all these bees in one location breeds disease, on top of the exposure of these animals to the toxic chemicals sprayed on the crops due to the intensification of the system. This puts the bee-keepers in a difficult position: rent out their bees to keep their business alive, but see their animals (yes bees are animals!) suffer the consequences of poor-health and, in some cases, colony collapse.
The growing of crops in monoculture models (intensive farming of one species of crop), drives this need for extra assistance from bees. As one bee-keeper in the documentary states, "nature usually provides enough bees to pollinate any ordinary orchard", but we are not operating within the bounds of nature. Our food production systems go against her, and it is only a matter of time before nature strikes back.
Netflix, though, is not one to leave their audiences feeling helpless. Clint Walker of Walker Honey Farm in Texas is a happy bee-keeper who has flipped the system on its head. He no longer sends his bees across the country for almond pollination, but keeps them local, where they provide pollination services in their home environment. Walker has turned his business into an educational facility, where people can come to see the bees in action, taste local honey and understand the importance of supporting bees.
But it's not just about the legal drama. The steep decline of bees and other pollinators worldwide urgently needs to be addressed. A horror movie could easily be pitched on the subject of the loss of bees from our environment. A bee holding a grim reaper’s scythe could make the cover of the movie poster below the tagline 'we’re dead, and we’re taking you all with us'.
Our food rapidly disappears without bees. Over one-third of the food we directly eat is brought to us by this service provided by bees. They are responsible for delivering meat and dairy too, by pollinating some of the plant crops these animals eat. If we supported their habitats instead of destroying them, they would happily go on providing this essential ecosystem service.
However, this has not been the case. In some provinces in China, bee populations have been decimated so severely that humans have been taking up the job of pollination. A human can pollinate five to 10 trees per day and costs just $12-$19 per day for the work.
The mass production of goods usually comes with a dangerous drop in standards. Is this a sustainable way of growing our food? When considering the future of our food systems, the bees need to be taken into account and someone needs to sit at the table to represent them.
Just like Netflix, I am not one to leave on a bitter note and would instead like to end with something sweet by directing you to the the All-Ireland Pollinator plan. This website is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to find out more about how they can help save pollinators. Here are a few tips taken from the website:
- Don't mow, let it grow! Allow your garden to do its own thing.
- Avoid using insecticides, fungicides and herbicides. These can kill or severely maim pollinators.
- Choose nectar and pollen-rich plants for your garden to help feed pollinators.
- Plant native wildflower species. Check your seeds before you sow to ensure you are planting what’s most suited to Irish pollinators.
Remember that the horror movie doesn’t have to come to pass.