Honey is more than just a
breakfast spread. It may just hold the key to the future of
our food supply.
THE HONEY SPINNER: On the trail of ancient honey,
vanishing bees and the politics of liquid gold
Grace Pundyk
Pier 9, pbk, $40
Review by Charmian Smith
There is a trend for authors to trace certain products around
the world, writing a sort of travel book, memoir, history and
exploration of a topic all rolled into one.
Australian journalist Grace Pundyk picks honey and honeybees
as her topic, and follows them along the sticky road from
Yemen to Australia, from Borneo to China and through the big
honey-packing businesses in the United Kingdom and United
States.
It is not all sweetness and light, despite the heavenly wild
honeys she discovers along the way.
According to the CIA, the honey business is crucial to al
Qaeda's operation.
Chinese honey, widely exported, has been found to contain
chloramphenicol, a bee drug harmful to humans.
There is also adulteration with corn syrup and chemical
residues of many types, fraud, and mislabelling, but, most
disturbingly, across Europe, Turkey, the US and Australia
bees are disappearing and nobody seems to know why.
Some put this colony collapse disorder (CCD) down to viruses
or pesticides, or genetically-modified crops which contain
pesticides.
Not only is the disappearance of bees fatal for the honey
industry, but also for the crops that bees pollinate, and so
for our food supply.
It is surprising how globalised the honey industry is, and
surprising how various governments fail to support bees and
beekeepers, she says.
Until people started asking about CCD nobody paid much
attention to bees and honey, arguing that if honey could be
imported more cheaply, why should they bother with a
home-grown product.
But honey is individual to the country and its vegetation -
we treasure New Zealand manuka, kamahi, and beech forest
honeydew honeys; across the ditch Tasmanian leatherwood and
the various gum-tree honeys are enjoyed, while in the Middle
East people will pay $150 for a jar of sidr honey from Yemen.
Pundyk travels with nomadic beekeepers in Yemen and in
Australia who take their hives around the country to wherever
the crops are flowering.
She visits New Zealand to explore the unusual antiseptic
properties of manuka honey and chart the spread of the varroa
mite from the north to Wellington on a truckload of logs in
which a swarm of bees was nesting.
She finds NGOs promoting non-timber forest products and
helping tribal wild honey collectors in the jungles of
Borneo.
Like many other natural products, honey production is
affected by weather, increasing drought, the destruction of
habitats, logging of forests and decimation of native
species.
She discovers that, as with so many other things, China is
the world's biggest producer (of honey), and is now forced to
clean up its act after harmful chemical residues were found
in its product.
The world today is dependent on China for food, she says.
In Britain, the US and Australia she talks to big honey
importers and blenders who do not declare the provenance of
the honey on their products - honey is a globally-traded
product, but in many countries declaring its origin on a
label it is not required.
As a result, canny beekeepers, like small producers of other
artisan products, are now producing local, individual floral
honeys that command a premium price.
- Charmian Smith is ODT book review editor.
