Someone Has An Axe To Grind

Somebody has reported me to the authorities. It seems that someone read my blog or facebook entry on the day I gave the owners of Hawthorne café some of my honey. Tom who owns Hawthornes have always supported my mad attempts with self-sufficiency and allows me to collect their used coffee grounds each week from the café. They are always offering me free coffees. I give them fresh produce including the odd jar of honey as a thank you.

Anyway someone has reported me to MAF ( Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries)  because they believe I am breaking the law by trading my honey, as bartering is a form of trading. Maybe they were concerned that Hawthorne was on-selling it in the café? Any local knows that Hawthorne are coffee roasters and all the food they sell is sourced from other commercial kitchens. They do not even have facilities to cook food. How could one small 250ml pot of honey given to friend who shares it with his family and happens to own a café potentially get me in trouble? Has the world gone mad? I have in the past been given pots of honey from beekeeping clubs for giving my time at beekeeping field days. I don’t believe any law has been broken then or now.

In New Zealand you are only permitted to sell your honey if regulations under the Food Act 1981 or the Tutin Honey Standard are followed. I know about this as I have written a web page on it here.

( interestingly when I made this  video above about Tutin honey I had this irrate email from an organic honey producer and seller demanding that I take the video off you tube immediately. She stated that she did'nt want potential customers knowing about this risk. Thats great - lets just keep the consumer in the dark! Obviously I refused) I follow the suggested safe guards to protect anyone from honey poisoning with my urban honey. Donating or bartering honey is a form of trade and is also subject to regulation under the Food Act 1981. This does not mean that you can't give honey to friends and family members.

Who has so much time on their hands to contact MAF about me? Why haven’t they used the blogs reply function or facebooks reply function to ask me about this face to face. I don’t believe it is anyone of the 335 people who follow my facebook  page and my blog. All these people have only ever given me lots of support and shared many great tips and advice. Obviously there is someone else who has a bit of a grudge who perhaps has a little too much time on their hands.

I have my suspects. I am involved with a Charitable Trust called Save Our Bees. This Trust is all about informing the public about how important bees are and how their numbers are declining worldwide. The Trust also supports and advises backyard beekeepers who want to do their bit for bees and keep a hive in their garden, particularly people who choose to keep bees in a Top Bar hive.  Many commercial beekeepers are against these sorts of hives as they don’t think they can be checked for diseases. This is absolute rubbish and I have on numerous occasions invited concerned beekeepers to my garden to show them how easy it is. None have accepted. Am I really that frightening?

The NBA and Management Agency recently even made and printed this broad statement that "Top Bar hives are against the ‘spirit’ of the Act" which protects bees and beekeeping in New Zealand. They are insisting that Top Bar Hives become mini Langstroths hives and have a frame build around each comb. This is even after MAF  (who luckily make the laws)  have made a statement that they see no issue as long as the bees in a Top Bar Hive can be checked for disease. The key consideration is that they can be checked.

When I started beekeeping I was very naive. I thought all beekeepers where predominantly lovely bearded gentleman who took on the persona of a bumblebee and had a deep empathy for bees. Unfortunately I don’t believe this is always the case. Don’t get me wrong I know of several hobbyist beekeepers who are just like this. I believe many commercial and semi commercial beekeepers are self-serving, patch protecting members of large cooperate organisations who are making huge money out of honey rather than having any thought for our poor overworked honey bee. I believe they feel threatened by the growth in backyard beekeeping, especially if these newbies are keeping their bees in anything other than a Langstroth hive.

Why can’t we all work together to help the bee. It is so counterproductive to have this 'them and us' situation. Backyard hobbyist have a unique position to be the guardians of bees protecting numbers when New Zealand encounters a collapse of colony numbers as many overseas countries are already experiencing.

Late last year when I was over in New York learning from hobby beekeepers I asked them if they experienced the same sort of negativity. They seemed very surprised and said ‘no, we are all working together to help breed and keep resilient healthy bees”. What’s wrong here?

 Anyway getting back to the phone call I received today. The authorities were  concerned that perhaps I was bartering pots of the stuff which was being used in the food sold at the café. After an explanation of who it was for they were very supportive and stated there was no problem with gifting honey to friends and family. They even wished me well with my experiment with living off the land.   Unfortunately it appears there are some evil spirited people out there in the cyberspace realm with too much time on their hands and an axe to grind. I hope she/he/they get a life. Perhaps as a tax payer I should invoice them for the time they have wasted these Government agencies with this complaint.

Honey- the new form of contraband?