23
COROMANDEL LIFE
SPRING 2013
HONEY LAUNDERING
Varroa and sprayed poisons are not the only threats to the
honey industry. There are increasing concerns that honey
‘laundering’ is going on in other countries, where foreign-
grown and even counterfeit honey (artificial concoctions of
sweeteners, plus a small amount of honey) are being marketed
as NZ honey, damaging our pure reputation.
Oritain, a testing facility in Dunedin, scientifically certifies the
origin of food products. They are working on establishing
a database of authentic honey samples that can then be
compared to that from other countries to verify the origin. They
can also determine the floral type of the honey (manuka, thyme,
clover, etc) and the percentage of floral type within blended
honeys.
Importing honey into NZ is not well supported because some
Asian and other honeys have been found to contain toxins such
as lead and other heavy metals and antibiotics. The United
States banned honey from China due to ‘dumping’ so they now
subject imports to duties. To get around this, the Chinese honey
is simply being routed to a second country, and re-labelled to
conceal its origin.
NECTAR: A MAGICAL ELIXIR
Nectar is specifically produced by plants to lure pollinators to
the flower so that they will undertake pollination, which leads to
fertilisation. Pollination is essential for many food crops. Plants
produce less nectar once they have been pollinated. Some
flowers open only for a single day or produce nectar only on the
first day of opening. It’s all sounding pretty hit and miss, ain’t it?
Nectar is made up of amino acids, minerals, essential oils and
organic acids, and a water solution of sugars: sucrose, glucose,
fructose and sometimes maltose. Honey bees seem to prefer
nectar with equal amounts of glucose, fructose and sucrose.
Despite the challenges posed by environmental conditions such
as temperature, soils moisture or fertility, levels of sunlight,
and variations in plant processes, some plants always produce
abundant levels of nectar, while others produce only small
amounts.
CLEVER NATIVE BEES
It was known that birds such as the tui and bellbird had
developed the technique of opening the flower of one species
of the NZ native mistletoe, Peraxilla tetrapetal, which is in
decline, but it was recently found that 3 genera of native bees
had also learnt this skill. The plant cannot open the bud itself
but birds had worked out how to twist the top of the ripe bud
which causes the petals to spring open to allow access to the
nectar and pollen.
In the South Island, scientists were astonished to see bees
biting off the top of the buds and pushing with their legs to
harvest the nectar and pollen, and assisting with pollination.
This is the only place in the world where bees are known to
have adapted this technique.
