Honey Loving: Talking Sweet with Melisseus’s “Swarm”

If you’re like me, you buy your honey from the grocery store without thinking much about how it got there. You might pick a bottle because it’s a nice shade of gold, or because it looks like it would taste good. This is all too normal—and exactly the kind of thought process Melisseus hopes to reshape.

We have a bee crisis on our hands, and it’s part of a much larger crisis in the environment and in our food systems that has pollinators dying and disappearing. While honeybees pollinate 1/3 of the world’s food supply, entire hives are dying off by the tens of millions. That means it’s not just the bees that are in danger (though that would be enough to cause a stir); it’s food in general that’s in trouble if the honeybees keep disappearing.

Melisseus is here to help reverse the processes that are wreaking havoc on our bee populations, by educating the public and working to protect the little buzzing pollinators in our local environment. 

The “Swarm”—comprised of Drew Souders, Laura Rozner and Kendall Jenkins—met as UVa undergrads in Christine Mahoney’s Experiential Social Entrepreneurship class, where they discovered a common interest in pollinator protection. The movement has been growing since 2006, when it was first discovered that bee colonies were being lost to what is now called “colony collapse disorder.”

It’s a somewhat clumsy name, but it correctly points to a sickness in the environment resultant from a number of stress factors. Some of these include unseasonably warm weather, the prevalence of the varroa destructor mite, poor bee nutrition, and perhaps worst of all, the rampant use of a class of pesticide called neonicotinoids, or “neo-nics” for short.

It is believed that neonicotinoids harm bees neurologically by effectively erasing their memories and preventing them from returning to their hives. When worker bees disappear en masse and leave a queen behind, the colony dies or “collapses” (hence the name of the disorder). Tragically, millions of hives have been lost in recent years as an effect of both colony collapse and other environmental stressors, leading to average loss rates near thirty percent.

“A huge hope for us is to educate the public about what’s going on,” said Laura, a Global Studies major specializing in environmental sustainability.

“The general public have some idea,” added Kendall, “but they don’t know ways they could help or access information.”

I’ve found this to be true on a personal level: while I had heard that the honeybees were disappearing, I’d never thought I could do anything about it, just assumed it was work for activists to fix. One of Melisseus’s aims is to create consumer-activists in everyday life by educating those who buy honey about how their purchasing decisions can help with the crisis.

“People can change this with the smallest buying decisions,” Kendall explained.

A related issue is the counterfeiting of honey, which drives prices down and hurts the local beekeepers who are doing their best to take care of their bees, but must sell their honey (rightly) at prices above those of the counterfeited honey. Some experts estimate that up to 2/3 of the honey sold in the U.S. is actually smuggled in from Asian and South American countries, with the pollen filtered out and sometimes with low-cost sweeteners added.

Drew added that there was unfortunately “very little regulation” on the issue of honey laundering, and that it was thus “important to look at and make sure you’re buying what you’re buying.”

The easiest way for consumers to make sure they’re getting real honey and help save bees is to buy from local beekeepers. And part of what Melisseus hopes to do by encouraging people to buy locally is, as Drew put it, to create “economic incentive for people to keep bees and do it the right way.”

In a town like Charlottesville, supporting beekeepers isn’t even that hard to do. So this week, as a result of our conversation, I actually went to the midweek farmers market in Meade Park, chatted up the honey farmer, looked at the gorgeous pictures of the flowers on his farm and bought a bottle. And I have to say—saving the world’s never tasted so sweet.