What is your honest opinion about this? Is it something good, or bad? Or is there some sort of a secret world domination hidden conspiracy behind it. To make us all dependant on this lab made synthetic honey. And slowly poison everyone from within? Jokes aside, seriously now. Do you see this as something positive? Or would you not buy it if you see it on the shelves of your local supermarket?
Negative in my opinion. The only honey I would touch would be the kind produced by bees that no-one can replicate no matter how hard they try!!
No, thank you. Honey bees are important, and we need to take care of them and their environment instead of replacing them with synthetic lookalike.
OK, I completely understand your opinions. And I also appreciate you guys voicing your concerns. I agree with you people for the large part, (however my reasons for not trusting this are a bit different). Now what about the practice of providing sugar water to the bees during off season? When flowers aren't blooming. Or when flowers aren't plentiful? Isn't that kind of cheating too?
They can call it what they want to but its just a honey flavored syrup ! Perhaps with a few local pollen grains thrown in ! As far as I know true honey cannot be replicated ! Unless you are a bee !!
You are right Mart. The bees are the only creatures that can make real honey. Everything else is just a poor substitute.
Domesticated animals need to be taken care of, or they suffer. Kept bees are the same in my opinion. A wolf can fend for itself. My neighbour's Bicon Frisè can't. It would either get killed and eaten, freeze to death, or starve to death in the wild. Horses are made for moving across long distances, nibbling as they go, putting on weight in summer and losing it or starving to death in winter. My horses were outside 24/7 during grazing season, but stabled and fed hay, mash, and supplements to keep them healthy during winter. I won't call that cheating. I call that thinking about animal welfare.
My neighbor has commercial bee hives,,too many for me to count ! She supplements her bees in winter as most do ! But bees can make honey from things other than flowers ! Believe me my yard is usually full of bees when weather is reasonable ! Bees love plain all purpose flour,, corn dust from my bird food and anything they can convert to sugar ! I feed them sugar water when we get summer drought ! Neighbor sowed crimson clover for them !
I would not want synthetic honey at all. I have lots of flowers for the bees and other pollinators. I do not have bee hives, but I try to keep lots of flowers that the bees love. And this time of year, do not get rid of your dandelions. They are one of the few things available to bees coming out of dormancy from the winter, and they NEED them. I don't use poisons if I can help it here, about the only thing I have to poison is hornets or wasps. However, I found an excellent solution last summer and that is make a FAKE HORNET'S NEST, and put them around to keep the hornets at bay and the bees and birds safe. How to make a FAKE HORNET'S NEST is simple. You need a paper bag of medium size, or even a lunch bag, some crumpled newspaper, a rubber band and a hook or wire of some kind. Crumple up your newspaper, and stuff the paper bag. Tie it shut with a rubber band, or even some masking tape. Hang it in a dry place like under your eaves or porch roof. Hornets are territorial and will leave. Mine from last year is still hanging on the front porch. It worked so well, that I got rid of those giant European brown hornets from my trees. I only saw ONE hornet last summer, and smacked him dead. I plan to hang one in my new shed just to be sure they do not move in on my chickens. This will not harm the birds or various bees, it is a good idea.
