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White House honey analyzed
Sweet stuff sent to Texas A&M to discover where bees are scoring their pollen at the world's most famous address.
Thu, May 26 2011 at 12:52 PM
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SWEET SUCCESS: The White House hive. (Photo: afagen/Flickr)
When White House carpenter Charlie Brandt installed the first beehive on the White House South Lawn in 2009, he probably had little idea how famous his bees and their honey would become.
Since the first harvest of just more than 134 pounds in 2009, the sweet stuff has been served at official state dinners, used in recipes by White House chefs, and beautifully presented as gifts to foreign officials and other dignitaries.
And now, it's gone under the microscope to see where exactly the bees are sourcing their pollen — and what might be done to make it even better.
Konrad Bouffard, owner of Round Rock Honey in Texas, recently sent samples of the White House honey to Texas A&M University for analysis. Bouffard regularly tests his own hives to identify where bees are sourcing the pollen that make up his honey and to ensure the absence of pollutants.
According to Austin360, Dr. Vaughn Bryant, a scientist at Texas A&M, discovered that White House bees are sourcing the majority of their pollen from clover but that the honey overall has a very low count of the powder. “This suggests that over the winter, the bees may have been fed sugar water, thereby reducing the final pollen concentration value of the produced honey,” he told the site.
Honey bees are often fed sugar water during the late winter months to assist in building up the colony, which often is reduced to several thousand bees (from a height of 60,000-70,000 in the summer) due to winter die-off. It's also a means to get the bees through a cool spring (like the one we just experienced) when they've exhausted their honey stores.
It's likely that the fall crop (generally harvested in early September) will show a honey that is much higher in pollen, but Bouffard recommends that the White House should also allow some lawn to grow wild near the South Lawn vegetable garden for even better results.
“Patches of un-manicured lawn are more important to producing quality honey than even herb and vegetable gardens,” he told Austin360. “Increasing the diversity of grasses and flowering weeds gives the bees more foraging options and helps maintain and preserve the natural pH and the humidity of the soil.”
The Texas A&M test also revealed pollen from dogwood, cherry, crepe-myrtle, elm, magnolia trees, honeysuckle and even poison ivy.
For more on the White House beehive, check out the video below:
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Huh? Oh... um.. I thought they were anazlyzing Michelle...
...then you've got a bigger problem than the 'honey sauce' containing HFCS. That's not food you're eating.
Could someone please confirm for me if honey made from poison ivy is toxin-free?
Definition of toxin needs clarification! If you mean, does an allergic person get poison ivy or poison oak from eating honey made from the nectar with pollen from those two plants: NO, is the answer.
If you mean does it have pollutants from other sources, YES is the answer. But then everything has pollutants from other sources. Don't worry, the longer we live, the sooner we die.
if the honey was toxic, it would have killed the bees. the bees filter out all poisons by simply processing it into honey. any residue toxins end up killing the bees, hence why many bees are dying. the lack of bees suggest that something in the air and plants are toxic.
I think this is a great idea!
When I first saw the headline of this story "White House honey analyzed", I thought it was about Bill Clinton.
All they really want is to tax the bee's for the pollen, and assign them a tax number for sales of honey.
Bee's?
geez...I love reading comments made on articles that are taken way too seriously...if this were a video, it would be Tosh 2.0 perfect!
geez...I love reading comments made on articles that are taken way too seriously...if this were a video, it would be Tosh 2.0 perfect!
Wow, a discussion that involves Obama and not one comment that he wasn't born in the US. Perhaps there IS hope after all!
Guess you blew that
These Americanized bees are infidels!
FYI one of the pollen sources is not crepe myrtle (a la the French pancake), but rather the "crape myrtle"
Carrie -
Don't let the other posters make you feel bad. I'm a beekeeper, and I agree that blowing them away with a leaf blower is completely uncalled for. There are many methods to remove the bees from honey that cause no harm to them, including the "bee exit" method you described. Blowing them away with a leaf blower can injure and even kill them - do we really need to do this when so many of them are dying from CCD and other means?
I do believe that I hear a tree calling out for a hug, Carrie. Embrace it, please.
Also, did Barbarians use leaf blowers?
A tree calling out for a hug? Shades of Kumbayah.
I'm glad someone is standing up for leafblowers. I only buy honey leafblown bees. The stress hormones add a nice tangy taste.
I am glad we are serving something to world beside weapon and war ,,,,long live the queen bee
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