# Could honey from in the walls of an old house have made me sick?



## justwondering (Jul 19, 2015)

Hi all - i'm not a beekeeper, i'm just trying to get to the bottom of something. I recently came down with a case of severe colitis that landed me in the hospital for a week. All the usual causes were ruled out, leaving the doctors to think something i'd eaten had given me some sort of food poisoning. The only thing I can think of that i ate that was out of the ordinary for me was honey. 

About the honey - a friend of mine's parents' house is old & run down & has been recently been being renovated. Inside the walls is a big old beehive. Another friend of mine keeps bees on the side, & so he went in and collected honey from the hives and took as many of the bees as he could to his farm. The honey was really good.. had some flecks of drywall in it but he said he strained it a whole bunch and that he'd eaten at least a jar and that the honey was good. And i believe him... i know honey is sort of anti-bacterial as well, so i know it's a long shot.. but is there any way that honey could have made me sick? Could something that was in the walls of the house growing (bacterial or fungal) have somehow been in the honey? I've read that honey doesn't have right stuff for microbes to flourish, but I just wanted to ask.. basically just out of curiosity at this point, because i want to be able to eat honey in the future knowing its not going to make me sick. I love REAL honey! But now i'm scared to eat it.


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

Cutout honey can contain rat feces, insect residue, lead paint, asbestos dust, fiberglass insulation, sawdust etc., anything the old house is made of and contains.


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## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

Welcome to BeeSource!
I'm not sure what your friend used to strain the honey that didn't get the drywall flecks out though, I usually strain mine through a 400 or 600 micron filter and there's not much that can get through it, especially the 600 filter.
I've always fed any honey from a cutout back to the bees.


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## justwondering (Jul 19, 2015)

odfrank said:


> Cutout honey can contain rat feces, insect residue, lead paint, asbestos dust, fiberglass insulation, sawdust etc., anything the old house is made of and contains.


So basically - yes. This could have been what got me sick. 

He's not got what you could call a very "professional" setup. it's very amateur and i love him to death but i doubt he was very careful.


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## Dominic (Jul 12, 2013)

GaryG74 said:


> Welcome to BeeSource!
> I'm not sure what your friend used to strain the honey that didn't get the drywall flecks out though, I usually strain mine through a 400 or 600 micron filter and there's not much that can get through it, especially the 600 filter.
> I've always fed any honey from a cutout back to the bees.


Yea, seriously, that's the first thing I thought as well.

I would never harvest honey from a cutout for human consumption. Heck, a lot of people try insecticides on them before calling in a beekeeper.

Was this honey the source of your ills? A lab test might help you determine that. However, it very well could have been. And if it didn't cause them, it could have caused other issues. Your friend has really poor judgement.


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## justwondering (Jul 19, 2015)

Dominic said:


> Your friend has really poor judgement.


Yeah. He means well, bless his heart. But I should have known better.


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

What happen to the rest of the bees? Honey from cutouts, as mentioned can be suspect, but I thought your friend ate it also?


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