Tending to her beehives in Somerset, southwest England, Lynne Ingram cuts a peaceful figure, but the master beekeeper has recently found herself coming up against an evolving foe: honey fraud. Faced with beekeepers going out of business, organisations are calling on the UK government to take action as scientists use cutting-edge technologies to fight the fraud.
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00:00Yeah, and so we opened up a hive and he had a frame in his hand, you know.
00:25There, preserving it.
00:30So honey fraud has gone on for hundreds of years. If you look back in historical books,
00:35you'll see that honey was adulterated with ash or potato flour or something.
00:40But because of the advancements in technology and science, it's much easier.
00:47It's more sophisticated. It's easier to do.
00:50They look a bit different.
01:01I shall never look at her.
01:11Well, one of the impacts that we're seeing all over the world, actually, is beekeepers going out of business.
01:19Part of what they do is take their bees to a particular crop to pollinate them.
01:25Now, if these are the people that are then going out of business, the impact is possibly on the production of food.
01:41Make a new home because she'll feel like her nest, she hasn't got anywhere to lay.
01:55Try this.
01:58We use photoluminescence, spectroscopy technology.
02:24When we illuminate a sample of honey with light, honey absorbs light and after that emits light.
02:36And we can trace different molecules through the spectrum and can confirm which type of biochemicals are present.
02:55That's pretty cool.
03:10Yeah, that would be interesting.