Pickens County Beekeepers Honey Statistics Page

The average American eats approximately 1.25 lbs of honey per year.
Do they know where that honey is coming from? There have been
problems with imported honey that is contaminated with things like
chloramphenicol, iprofloxacin, Enrofloxacin, and now lead.   The March
2009 ABJ World Honey Market says this:

                "In a series of stories published during December 2008 and January 2009 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
senior correspondent Andrew Schneider, said "Two-thirds of the honey Americans consume is imported and almost
half of that, regardless of what's on the label, comes from China." He said that "concealing discoveries of
contaminated imported honey is immoral, unethical and often illegal - and it happens far too often." Some of the
sources interviewed by Schneider said that they had simply given up reporting instancers of illegally imported or
contaminated Chinese honey due to government disinterest and inaction. Washington beekeeper Eric Olsen said,
"We've screamed our heads off for so long, so that's kind of a dead subject. We just gave up."

It is important to know where your honey comes from - who the
beekeeper is, how he/she keeps their bees, extracts and handles their
honey is really nice to know if you can.

Here are links to some of the articles on contaminated honey -

Honey Laundering By ANDREW SCHNEIDER (2008)

Antibiotic use could taint honey's reputation as a miracle drug
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER (2008)

Don't let claims on honey labels dupe you
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER

Where the US buys honey in the world
Sources: ImportGenius.com and Trade Mining LLC

Chloramphenicol in Honey - a Factsheet
from Health Canada

Now go out and find your local beekeeper and tell them
you appreciate them (and their bees, of course!). The
Pickens County Beekeepers try to have a table or booth
at most of the fairs and festivals, like Azalea Festival,
Dacusville Farm Days, and Hagood Mill. We welcome
questions and quite a few of us will show you around
our apiaries.

If you want us to come to your local fair or festival, just
contact us at: pcbeekeepers@yahoo.com
               or   the WebWitch

If the weather is nice we will try to bring our observation hive, if you like -