This pot of honey comes from bees in a hive on our nearby allotments.
I have never tasted honey like it.
It starts off honey-ish and sweet and ends with interesting tastes, almost floral.
Bees – like most of us – do not like pesticide-sprays that spoil their food. So they thrive in a chemical-free environment, such as organic farms.
As the largest British survey found, there is more wildlife on organic farms.
Yet this common-sense evidence is being ignored.
As you probably know, the honey bee is under threat from Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease which leaves hives deserted. Have the bees gone off to die? No one knows.
A lot of our food sources depend on insect/bee pollination so we mess with honey bees at our peril.
Research indicates that the industrial farming of bees is bad for bees: large-scale transportation of hives, pesticide-spraying and, possibly, genetic modification – at least in the US where GM plants are commercially-grown – is damaging the health of bees.
Now to make matters worse, I now hear, thanks to the Ecologist, that the very company, Syngenta, that manufactures the bee-killing pesticide is also breeding bees.
For some reason, this reminds me of pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca,which makes the breast cancer drug tamoxifen, ALSO produces pesticides, including organochlorine acetochlor, implicated in breast cancer. Astra Zeneca is a keen sponsor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Can you get your head round this? Answers in the comments box gratefully received.
- Sign the Soil Association petition to ban bee-harming neonicotinoids – now.
- See the film Vanishing of the Bees
- Read A World Without Bees by Alison Benjamin
Real Food Lover 