As scientists race to investigate the sudden and inexplicable collapse of bee colonies in America and Europe, international smugglers are coming up with new and imaginative ways to get Winnie the Pooh’s favourite snack into breakfast cereals and onto supermarket shelves.

‘Honey laundering,’ the authorities call it.

As the name suggests, honey laundering involves disguising drums of the sticky stuff from China by selling it to a third party—usually a distributor in another part of the world—then re-packaging it and re-exporting it, so that its source remains unknown.

According to an investigation by the Seattle Post Intelligencer, several tons of Chinese honey have this year passed through ports in Tacoma, Washington, and Long Beach, California, after being fraudulently repackaged as the product of Russia.

Other shipments have been routed through India, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, and Thailand. In one particularly brazen case, drums of Chinese honey were marked ‘Polish Light Amber Honey’.

The reason for the elaborate subterfuge? To avoid health and safety checks, along with the import fees, and other special tariffs imposed by authorities in the US and other countries on Chinese food products ‘dumped’ on the market at below the cost of production.

“There are more crooks than ever, and it has become a real nasty business out there,” Elise Gagnon, president of Odem International, one of North America's largest honey importers, told the Intelligencer. “They gamble and very, very few—almost none—get caught. So they keep corrupting the system.”

According to America’s National Honey Board, the US is one of the world’s biggest honey consumers, buying up to 450 million pounds of the stuff each year. With retail prices currently at $4.39 per pound, that makes the industry worth $2 billion annually.

Before the sudden disappearance of bee colonies that began in 2006—a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder—the US was able to produce almost two-thirds of all its honey. Today, it’s closer to a third.

As harmless as honey laundering might sound, health officials say that unless something is done, the problem could result in a repeat of the tainted baby milk and pet food scandals that dominated headlines this year—this time with honey. The reason dates back to 1997 when Chinese bee hives were almost wiped out by a bacterial epidemic. Instead of destroying the hives, beekeepers treated them with chloramphenicol, an toxic antibiotic—linked by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other health authorities around the world to aplastic anemia, a serious blood disorder.

The practice has since been outlawed by China’s Ministry of Agriculture, but even today, some Chinese honey remains tainted—hence the fact that random checks on shipments are carried out at US ports. Also, Chloramphenicol isn’t the only problem with Chinese imports. Last year, health officials in Florida found traces of two other antibiotics—ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin—in honey and blends of honey syrup from China.

Environmentalists believe that finding a solution to Colony Collapse Disorder is the best way to stop Chinese honey imports, but some have accused the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) of being too slow in committing funds to study the phenomenon, the cause of which is suspected to be pesticides, pathogens, or a lack of genetic diversity.

While the honey industry is relatively small at $2 billion annually, say environmentalists, the consequences of a total collapse in bee populations could be devastating: a recent study by the Journal of Economics found that the annual value of insect pollination—of which bees make up a large part—was $215 billion, or about 9.5 per cent of the global agriculture trade.

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