What is the future of honey in the face of globalised neoliberal trade policies and climate change?

Honey seems to be coming full circle in its popularity. Although sugar displaced it in the cuisines of modern cultures in the last three to four centuries, it never completely lost its associations with health, medicine, religion and ritual practices that were so prevalent in numerous ancient and early cultures. As often happens, many of those associations survived as folk practices that are now being validated by science. Meanwhile, individuals and groups throughout the world kept up traditions of beekeeping and harvesting honey from the wild, and various social and cultural movements, particularly indebted to the awareness of the interconnected nature of changes to the natural environment, the production of foodstuffs and support for locally sourced work, are supporting a renewed interest in honey.

Concerns about the industrial food system and food safety, philosophical challenges to the dominance of Western attitudes towards food (and life in general), political challenges to free-market capitalism, and the turn towards holistic and natural lifestyles, as well as the expansion of global palates to a more adventurous desire for new tastes, are all contributing to a renewed respect for honey, encouraging people to consume more of it. The shrinking of the world through new media, technologies and increased mobility also means that the wide range of the many honeys’ varied flavours is now known and available. This piques people’s curiosity, and feeds into an appreciation – and willingness to pay – for speciality honeys as well as for local honeys produced on a smaller and more personal scale. The renewed interest in honey can even be attributed to a rootlessness that seems pandemic in the modern globalised world and that is perhaps eased by consuming foods with strong ties to specific regions, offering eaters a taste of place (terroir) that then gives psychological or spiritual grounding.

Unfortunately, there are now concerns about the safety and quality of commercially distributed honey as well as the future of honeybee colonies, and thus of honey production. Disease, pests, mites, loss of habitat, pesticides (particularly neonicotinoids), monocrop agriculture, climate change and the influx of other varieties of bees are threatening colonies in the US and internationally. In 2006–7, American beekeepers reported losses of 30 to 90 per cent of their hives. There were sudden, unexplained losses of the worker bees in spite of relatively healthy amounts of honey and pollen in the hives. This was named Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and remains a problem for many beekeepers, not only in the United States but in Europe, too.

Scientists have discovered that some garden plants are being grown with neonicotinoids impregnated into the plant’s tissue. The insecticides cause neurological impairment in the bees. The bees leave the hives and then cannot find their way back. The common practice of transporting hives from place to place to pollinate particular crops further threatens bee populations by spreading diseases and by facilitating ways for mites to attack the bees. Also, in some locations around the world, traditional methods of obtaining honey from the wild have destroyed nesting sites and colonies.

One response to these concerns has been to create hardier breeds of bees. An example is the Buckfast bee, named after Buckfast Abbey in Devon, where in the early 20th century, one of the monks, Brother Adam, developed a bee that could withstand the parasitic mites that were decimating bee colonies in the British Isles. Starting with English bees and queens imported from Italy, he worked for over seventy years, adding various strains from around the world, to create the Buckfast bee. While Brother Adam’s work involved mixing different bees to create new strains, debates abound over the wisdom of using what are considered more intrusive techniques in developing genetically modified bees in order to fight the effects of the pesticides and herbicides prevalent in industrialised agriculture. An example of such experimentation gone wrong is the “killer bees”of Brazil that are feared to threaten native species as well as the honeybees if they move north, which they might do as temperatures shift due to climate change.

Globalisation and neoliberal trade policies have also affected the quality and safety – and taste – of all of our food, including honey. Within the industrial food system, honey has simply become another commodity to be valued according to the potential profits it can turn. Small producers lose out to larger corporations that can simultaneously sell for cheaper prices and control production and distribution. The quality of the resulting honey tends to be diluted, with consumers opting for lower prices and quantities. The product becomes standardised and homogenised, and the nuances of flavours representing specific places and plant sources are lost.

Deception around a product being sold as honey also occurs, since honey itself tends to be more expensive than other sugary substances. In 2013, there were instances of a corn syrup product being sold as honey by Chinese companies. Such man-made honey is actually not new. In the 5th century BCE the Greek historian Herodotus reported that King Xerxes’ army found honey being made of wheat and tamarish, and in Libya the nomadic Gyzantes people made their own honey substitute. Such substitutes can pass for honey among people who have never tasted the real thing or who purchase food only according to price.

Furthermore, within a large, industrial food system, it is easy for people to lose sight of consumer safety or the welfare of the people who work within the industry. Some Chinese honey was found in 2002 to contain an antibiotic, chloramphenicol, which can cause a lethal type of anaemia. Similarly, farmers are pressured into using pesticides and herbicides that can have harmful effects on bees – and the residue can be transferred into the honey, contaminating it.

In response to such concerns, organisations have been established to ensure the quality and sustainability of honey: for example, the American Honey Producers Association, the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council, the Unique Manuka Factor Honey Association in New Zealand and numerous others around the world. While not focusing on honey, the agricultural industry, as a whole, sees the well-being of bees as crucial since they are used to pollinate major crops, a focus that lends itself to the production of quality honey. Similarly, the issues impacting bees are seen as critical by a number of environmental and governmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the European Union (which, in 2013, banned three pesticides known to harm bees), the Environmental Justice Foundation, the Pesticide Action Network Europe, and the US-based Friends of the Earth. The renewed interest in honey – not only as food, but as medicine and cosmetics – can help support these other roles of bees as pollinators.

Does honey have a future? Judging from the wealth of cookbooks now being published, the popularity of beekeeping as a hobby and cottage industry, and the growing awareness of the importance and appreciation of natural foods – and of bees – honey seems to be well positioned for a revival of its earlier significance. Or, as some might say, it looks like honey has a sweet future ahead.

Excerpted with permission from Honey: A Global History, Lucy M Long, Pan Macmillan.