USDA Grants License for First-ever Vaccine for Bees – Be Careful Where you Source Your Honey & Almonds!

It's becoming more and more obvious that the U.S. Government's answers for almost all health issues now are new vaccines. Dalan Animal Health announced this week that the U.S. Department of Agriculture granted them a conditional license for the first-ever vaccine for bees. “Our vaccine is a breakthrough in protecting honeybees,” Dalan CEO Dr. Annette Kleiser said in a statement, suggesting it might “change how we care for insects, impacting food production on a global scale.” California accounts for almost half of all the US honeybee colonies, due to the high demand of the almond industry. Almond plantations in the state’s central valley provide an estimated 80% of the world’s supply, and require up to 30,000 colonies to be shipped there by truck every year during pollination season. The concentration has a downside, as bees can get poisoned by pesticides or catch infections from other swarms, requiring apiaries to destroy millions of insects rather than sending them back. Honey is one of nature’s most perfect and beneficial foods. The documented research on the incredible health benefits of honey is truly astounding. If you type in the search term “honey” in the National Library of Medicine on the NIH Government website, you will get almost 16,000 results from peer-reviewed medical journals. It is the ONLY sweetener on the market that you can purchase that is a complete, whole food, as opposed to granulated sugar which is an extract from either a grass (sugar cane), or from beets (sugar beets). But even before this license by the USDA to allow beekeepers to vaccinate their bees, almost all of the honey sold in North America has been contaminated with the herbicide glyphosate, from RoundUp. My store, Healthy Traditions, is one of the few places one can purchase raw honey that is harvested in the Chilean Andes Mountains and Rain Forests, and tests clean for pesticides and herbicides.

Honey: Nature’s Miraculous Healing Food – But is the Honey You Buy Contaminated by Commercial Agriculture’s Herbicides and Pesticides?

Honey is one of nature's most perfect and beneficial foods. The documented research on the incredible health benefits of honey is truly astounding. If you type in the search term "honey" in the National Library of Medicine on the NIH Government website, you will get 15,480 results from peer-reviewed medical journals. It is the ONLY sweetener on the market that you can purchase that is a complete, whole food, as opposed to granulated sugar which is an extract from either a grass (sugar cane), or from beets (sugar beets). But purchasing real, pure, unadulterated raw honey that is not contaminated with herbicides or pesticides, is another matter altogether. Testing done in 2011 on grocery store honey showed that up to 80% of the honey sold in grocery stores is adulterated and even fake, much of it imported from China illegally. I know for a fact that this is true, because my company, Healthy Traditions, has been importing high quality pure honey from outside the United States for more than a decade, and while we do NOT import honey from China, every single shipment of honey that we have imported goes through an FDA hold to ensure that it is not "honey" that originated from China and is relabeled. It takes us more time to get honey across the border than any other product we import. Honey that is produced in the U.S. and Canada is mostly a by-product of professional bee keepers who make their primary income from leasing out their bees to pollinate crops in commercial agriculture, which are heavily treated with herbicides and pesticides, and the resulting honey from these bees is just a by-product of these commercial bee operations, and that includes most "local" honeys. So what I am going to do in this article is educate you on the numerous health benefits of raw, pure honey, and the lucrative bee and honey operations in commercial agriculture, so that you can be an informed consumer and look for pure, raw honey that is not contaminated. Pure raw honey has been proven through numerous studies to be more effective than drugs in treating many diseases, and since honey can be stored indefinitely and tends to improve with age, like fine wines, this is a food that you want in your long-term food storage plans, and you want honey that heals, not honey that is contaminated, or "honey" that is not even real honey at all.

Study: 99% of Canadian Honey Analyzed Contaminated with Herbicide Glyphosate

A recent study published in the journal Food Additives & Contaminants analyzed 200 random samples of honey in Canada. The study was conducted by the Agri-Food Laboratories, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Their analysis found that almost 99% of the honey samples analyzed were contaminated with the herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp that has been linked to cancer. "Two hundred randomly chosen honey samples, which were submitted to our laboratory for other testing, were analysed using the online SPE-LCMS/MS method to obtain information regarding baseline levels of glyphosate, its main degradation product AMPA, and the other acidic herbicide, glufosinate. Glyphosate was detected in almost all honey samples analysed with 197 out of 200 samples (98.5%) having residues..."

How to Use Raw Honey in Place of Sugar in Baking

Raw honey is one of the healthiest sweeteners readily available for use in baking. Honey is a much better choice than processed sugar. Granulated sugar made from cane sugar is actually is a natural product. However, most types of granulated sugars in the market go through a very refined processing method which strips out most of the natural nutrients. In addition, granulated sugar from sugar beets is more than likely from a GMO source. Therefore, you’re better off using raw honey, which is a whole food that in its natural state needs no further refining. And its healthier too! The information here will show you how to replace sugar in your baked goods with raw honey.

Is the Best Honey Really “Local” Honey?

John Thomas does an excellent job of addressing the common belief that healthy honey has to be "local" honey produced nearby where you live. Considering the fact that most honey bees in the United States today are transported all over the country to pollinate commercial agricultural crops dependent on the use of toxic herbicides and pesticides, it is obvious that simply being "local" is not a guarantee of a higher quality product. John investigates the current science on this topic of "local honey," and discusses what issues are far more important in selecting a high quality honey.

Honey: A Powerful Anti-Cancer Agent

Most of us know honey as a sweet treat, but few are aware of its powerful cancer killing properties. Honey is a superlative healing food. We know it has over 69 health benefits, as confirmed by the biomedical literature itself. But did you know it could be of profound benefit in diseases as life threatening and seemingly incurable as cancer?

Honey Out-Performs Antibiotics in Fighting Superbugs

Honey has been used for centuries to counteract infections, but until recently few realized just how antibiotic honey was. There is overwhelming evidence from research showing that honey beats some pharmaceutical antibiotics when it comes to a variety of superbugs.

Honey Heals Chronic Dandruff, Scaly, Itchy Scalp (Seborrheic Dermatitis)

Amazingly, something as simple as crude honey has been found to alleviate an embarrassing scalp condition that most body care products and drugs can't even make a dent in, like chronic dandruff and seborrheic dermatitis. We should not be surprised by these remarkable results. Honey has been considered one of nature's most remarkable gifts to mankind since ancient Indian (vedic) civilization. In ancient Egyptian culture honey was the most popular drug mentioned: 500 times in 900 remedies.

Honey Plus Coffee Beats Steroid For Treating Cough

A remarkable new study looking at natural alternatives to medications found that compared to a systemic steroid, a combination of honey and coffee was superior in reducing symptoms associated with a post-infectious cough (PPC). PPC is a cough that remains after a common cold or an upper respiratory tract infection for more than three weeks, and in some cases as long as several months. Conventional treatment may involve any number of powerful drugs, many of which have serious side effects, including codeine and dextromethorphan (so-called centrally acting antitussives), antihistamines, narcotics, and bronchodilators. Given the relative safety and superior effectiveness of honey plus coffee versus prednisolone, this study adds to a growing body of biomedical research indicating that natural substances, including spices, vitamins and foods, are often superior in efficacy to synthetic drugs while often maintaining far higher levels of safety relative to them.

Why You Should Ditch Sugar In Favor of Honey

While honey and sugar share similar degrees of sweetness, the differences in the way our bodies respond to them are profound.