Susan Dominus has a fascinating article in the New York Times about sugar-happy bees.
Recently a few Red Hook beekeepers began noticing that their bees, and their honey, were an usual color. Instead of their natural golden browns, theses bees were bright red. Bright, marishino cherry red — kind of like the color of the huge outdoor vats of syrupy cherry juice at the Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company in Red Hook.
The beekeepers discovered that yes, the bees were cruising over to factory and drinking the cherry juice, rather then feeding on the nectar of flowers found closer to their hives. But why would they go to all this effort?
According to Dominus, the unhealthy but extremely sweet nectar is just that appealing to the bees. They will go to a lot of extra effort to consume the cherry syrup, which is not only sweet, but also readily available in huge quanitites.
Sound familiar? Just like the bees, we are bombarded with images and advertisements for sugar-filled processed foods. They are everywhere — cheap and in large quantities.
When you hear about the bees and their sugar-addiction, don’t you just want to say: “Hey Bees! That’s not healthy. Look, you are literally turning another color from that stuff!” So can we say the same things to ourselves when we gravitate towards the nearest processed and HFCS filled food? After all, unlike bees we have the power of rational decision making. We don’t have to drink the marishino cherry juice.
To get a beekeepers opinion on all this, I spoke with Matt Deprizio, who runs Matt’s Honey House at the Columbus Circle Holiday Market in New York City. Matt sells Golden Rule Honey — which is raw, unheated, unfiltered, natural honey. According to Matt, when bees don’t have enough forage in their environments, they seek out fructose from other sources, like soda spilled on the street, or in the case of the Red Hook bees, vats of cherry juice. This is why bees do so well in more rural and natural setting — there are tons wildflowers to feed from. In New York City there just aren’t that many flowers and plants for bees.
Matt also told me some unfortunate things about commercial beekeeping and honey. Here are 3 things I learned:
1. Most generic honey is heated to 160 degrees F and then cooled rapidly. This kills all the enzymes in honey that are good for you! Raw honey is not heated, treated, or tampered with — so it keeps all it’s healthy compounds.
2. Many large-scale commercial beekeepers make their money not from honey production, but from contracts with large agriculture corporations. They bring their bees to massive mono-crop farms and let the bees pollinate. This isn’t the best environment for the bee — they do better with a more diverse environment. But it is good for business.
3. Big honey producers also intentionally feed their bees high fructose corn syrup! It’s cheaper and easier than letting them pollinate naturally, but ultimately affects the quality of the honey, and diminishes its positive health benefits.
Raw, natural honey doesn’t do any of this. It’s made by bees who forage on wildflowers, and left untreated. It’s delicious, and good for you. (Raw honey has been used for centuries for digestion, curing colds, and many, many other uses.)
Go visit Matt at the Columbus Circle Holiday Fair to learn more and get some good, natural honey.
*Thanks to Bria for helping out with this article.
