UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Honey from the continental U.S. can’t currently be certified organic due to specific land requirements, but farms in the Northeast may still produce honey that is as low in pesticide residue as imported organic honeys, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State, Cornell University and Auburn University.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic certification requires that beekeepers manage their colonies via organically-certified treatments and that the flowers bees forage on are free of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers or other treatments. Since bees cannot be contained to specific foraging areas, this certification also requires a forage radius of up to three miles of organic-certified land around the hive. That’s more land than is available surrounding most apiaries.
In the study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, researchers compared pesticide residues in both imported certified organic honeys and honeys produced in the Northeast U.S. They found that honey produced by organically managed colonies — those maintained following all organic standards except for the land requirement — was low in pesticide residue, with levels comparable to imported certified organic honeys and lower than conventional honeys.
Margarita López-Uribe, Nancy and John Steimer Professor in Agricultural Sciences in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and a co-author on the study, said she hopes the findings can inform new science-based requirements that open up opportunities for organic honey production in the United States.
“Based on our group’s previous research, we know that organic beekeeping is both very good for the health of honey bees and can also be economically profitable for beekeepers,” she said. “And while domestic demand is increasing yearly for organic honey, American beekeepers do not currently have access to that growing market.”
There are many challenges to organic beekeeping in the U.S., the researchers said, and a few apiaries in Hawaii are the only ones in the country to be certified as organic.
One challenge is that synthetic miticides — pesticides that target tiny mites that attack and feed on bees — are a commonly used tool to manage pests but are banned in organic production. Another is that unlike many other types of livestock, bees cannot be contained so it is difficult to control where they forage.
This has resulted in the recommended 1.8-mile-radius forage zone surrounding apiaries to meet organic standards, as well as an additional 2.1 mi surveillance zone free from “high risk” areas such as landfills, wastewater treatment facilities, towns or cities, or crops that receive synthetic pesticides and are attractive to bees.
“As a result of the challenges of finding enough land to satisfy this requirement, U.S. beekeepers have effectively been excluded from producing certified organic honey,” López-Uribe said. “We wanted to know whether we could produce honey that was comparable to USDA certified organic honeys even without meeting the land requirements.”
For the study, the researchers established 72 colonies using organic management practices on six large organic farms. Natural and semi-natural habitats comprised 56% to 93% of the land within a 1.86 mi radius of the farms.
A year later, the researchers screened the honey from the colonies for 96 different pesticide residues and compared these contamination levels to 20 brands of store-bought organic and conventional honey.
The team found that when only considering pesticide contamination limits, 98.2% of the organically managed honey samples were suitable for organic certification. Only one sample exceeded maximum residue limits for organic honey.
The researchers also found that honey from 30% of the sample certified organic Hawaiian apiaries exceeded the standard for miticide residues. López-Uribe said this finding suggests that contamination from these miticides — not bee foraging area size — is the major challenge in organic honey production.
“The trace levels of miticides found in these samples are puzzling, as their use is not allowed in certified organic beekeeping operations,” said Robyn Underwood, apiculture educator with Penn State Extension and collaborator on the study. “We are, therefore, interested in investigating alternative routes of contamination.”
The researchers said that in the future, additional studies could continue to analyze pesticide contaminations in a variety of U.S. landscapes and across foraging distances of honey bee colonies placed on organic farms across different seasons.
Benedict DeMoras, doctoral student at Auburn University; Angélica Sanchez, Cornell University; Emily O'Neil, Cornell University; and Scott McArt, Cornell University, also co-authored the study.
This research was supported by the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative under grant number 2022–51300-37884 and the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture Federal Appropriations under project numbers PEN04716 and PEN04620 and accession numbers 1020527 and 1011873. This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders.