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at a pollinator conference. “What mite treatment do you use?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he said, “You don’t think they harm the honey, do you? I mean all those warnings, they’re just government stuff, right?” Steven explained that he used one of the commercial products that stipulated that honey supers must be removed before use. He did that for a while but then got all mixed up about which su- pers had been tagged for extraction and which were gave up and just mixed the honey altogether based on the old maxim, “Dilution is the solution to pollution.” Problem solved.
His kids ate it, he said, and no one got sick. The next year he sold it at the fair, and no one com- plained. Still, I could tell it bothered him. Even things that seem simple and straight for- ward are sometimes not. I’m generally a law-abid- ing citizen and would not dream of selling honey contaminated with mite meds. On the other hand, I will feed my family a can - yond the pull date because I think pull dates are bo- gus. I could say the same thing as Steven, “They ate it and no one got sick.” All of which demonstrates that our beliefs and perceptions color what we think is ethical and what we think is nonsense.
Pharmaceutical Contamination The question of pharmaceutical contamination in hon- ey did not arise with varroa mites. Until it became illegal in 2017, beekeepers routinely used antibiotics in their hives to treat for both American and European foulbrood. Today, certain antibiotics can still be used for that purpose, but certi- can be purchased. The problem was one of overuse: bee- keepers were using drugs such as oxytetracycline and tylosin prophylactically to prevent outbreaks of disease. The drugs - terial infections. As we have seen in other livestock, overuse of these drugs can cause resistant strains of bacteria to develop which can
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result in so-called “superbugs,” organisms resistant to specif- ic antibiotics. Sometimes these superbugs like Staph become resistant to multiple drugs and can no longer be controlled by antibiotics, causing tremendous problems. When honey gets contaminated, humans end up eating low dosages of the drugs, which is one of the quickest way to develop resistant bacteria. With low dosag- es, some bacteria may be killed, leaving only the re- sistant ones to thrive and reproduce. Some epidemiologists
believe that long-term ex- posure to low-level dosag- es of antibiotics in every- thing from beef stew to hand soap sped the devel- opment of many of our current superbugs. In an attempt to lessen human exposure, these products are now being restricted in animal husbandry.
Oversight and Abuse Of course, stricter
oversight does not mean that antibiotics are no longer being used by bee- keepers. Some beekeepers, by their own admission, stockpiled antibiotics be- fore they became unavail- able. Others are using smuggled merchandise or off-label products they -
ternet or from friends. Selmi, a retired accountant in Florida, said of antibiotics, “I can’t be lifting supers all the time, so I put it in the hives and leave it there. Nobody’s going to test the honey. And if they did, who’s to say where those things came from? Robbing bees maybe? Or drifters?” Contaminated honey is not the only problem resulting from the misuse of antibiotics. For example, some beekeepers have unknowingly purchased nucleus colonies in which foul- brood was being suppressed by antibiotics. The new owner, himself with infected hives which must be burned, bees and all. Sometimes, entire apiaries are destroyed. In several of the stories relayed to me, the sellers simply shrugged and denied any knowledge of foulbrood in their operations.
Treatment-Free Beekeeping
More contentious than many issues in contemporary bee- keeping is the question of treating, or not, for varroa mites.
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