Bulletproof Radio host, Dave Asprey, invited Maryam Henein, HoneyColony’s founder and the director of the internationally-acclaimed documentary Vanishing of the Bees to speak about bees, pesticides, product labeling, autoimmune conditions, and more. Bulletproof Radio is a program that distills the knowledge of world-class MDs, biochemists, Olympic nutritionists, and experts.
Watch the show!
Bulletproof Radio Roundup
What You Will Hear (note: timestamps represent audio, video may differ)
- 0:00 – Cool Fact of the Day
- 2:48 – Introducing Steve Breitbach & Maryam Henein
- 5:30 – Maryam’s pivotal car crash
- 7:10 – What is a colony collapse?
- 10:49 – Effects of continued use of pesticides
- 14:22 – Making Vanishing of the Bees
- 20:20 – Changes in product labeling
- 21:55 – Discovering the effects of honey
- 29:38 – Other non-honey bee products
- 38:18 – Bees in the modern world
- 43:00 – Cheap honey vs. raw, unfiltered honey
- 45:18 – Honey allergies & treatment
- 52:24 – Top 3 recommendations to kick more ass and be Bulletproof!
Environmental Indicators
Bees are responsible for pollinating most of our fruits and vegetables, from avocados to zucchini. Did you know it takes about 60,000 bees collectively traveling up to 55,000 miles and visiting more than two million flowers to get enough nectar to make one pound of honey?
Dave: What is colony collapse?
Maryam: Back when colony collapse was discovered by David Hackenberg in 2007, it seemed like a mystery. Now, the only thing that seems mysterious is that CCD is not more widely discussed. The bees disappear in a very short amount of time. There are other characteristics and we now know today that at the root cause are the systemic pesticides that are killing bees and are also now in our water, affecting human brains, and killing other pollinators, be it bats or monarchs, so on and so forth. It’s happening all over the world from the United States to Greece.
This family of systemic pesticides is the most popular in the entire world. They are manufactured by Bayer CropScience. They are also manufactured by Syngenta and they were deemed safer, but that’s not actually the case. What happens is that it uptakes into the plant itself, so the flowers themselves become toxic. The bees then take back the nectar and pollen and store it and then it affects future generations. (We just recently found out that the bees are actually addicted to the stuff. yet another semblance that we are the bees. )
It’s very insidious because it’s not easy to point and say, “Oh, this is what killed the bees” because there’s also all these variables and you’ll often come across in magazines, articles that they’re like, “The bees are dying due to multitude of factors.” Sometimes pesticides are listed as the last factor and sometimes not listed at all. There’s a lot of disinformation out there, but there’s empirical evidence from beekeepers around the world and this has been happening since 2007. It started happening actually earlier in the mid-’90s in France. In France, they say that the government is afraid of the people where here we are afraid of the government. They rally, they sued. When those pesticides were removed, there was a comeback that was witnessed. However, they put forth more systemic pesticides. In a nutshell, that’s what systemic pesticides are.
Just like honeybees are environmental indicators, so are autoimmune sufferers who have become an expert to overcoming her own autoimmune condition.
The onslaught of environmental toxins and the inability to properly detoxify from them (overwhelming body burden) is the main reason why there are more cases of autoimmune conditions.
Listen to the show to learn what you can do to Bee the change.
Katherine Barner is a New Yorker with a passion for writing, learning about anything and everything, and making the world a better place.
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