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Bee Honey is the Latest Animal-Free Food To Come From Precision Fermentation

by Michael Wolf
October 30, 2020October 30, 2020Filed under:
  • Future Food
  • News
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Ahh, the magic of fermentation.

Over the past couple of years, the age-old process that brought us beer, soy sauce and kombucha has become suddenly sexy as it’s taken on new power through innovative startups trying to reinvent our food system.

While old-school fermentation continues to be a highly scaled workhorse, a new group of startups now use fermentation in innovative new ways that allow them to replicate proteins and other food compounds normally sourced from animals. In other words, they’re making animal products without the actual animal.

The end-result is products like Perfect Day’s ice cream or New Culture’s cheese that replicate the taste and experience of food produced the old fashioned way, on farms and through industrial production, without the need for animals.

And now, the miracle of precision fermentation is bringing us a new analog for a food that is particularly in peril: bee honey.

A startup by the name of Melibio wants to create bee honey using microbial fermentation technology. The “honey,” which company CEO Darko Mandich says “resembles the taste, the texture, and the viscosity of bee-made honey,” will be made by replicating the process used to create bee honey.

Why a honey alternative? As most know at this point, the honey bee population has been in precipitous decline over the past decade. Climate change, pesticides and, yes, murder hornets all continue to pose a threat to honey bees and the $7 billion honey industry.

Of course, creating biosynthesized honey won’t replace honey bees themselves. The declining bee population remains a problem, especially given the larger role of bees as pollinators To help us there, we may have to rely on technology Hail Maries like robotic bee drones or bubbles to solve the problem.

So how soon will it before we can taste Melibio’s bee honey without the bee? According to Mandich, the company plans to launch their honey replacement sometime next year and that 14 companies have signed letters of intent to use the product.

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Related

MeliBio Raises a Sweet $850,000 Pre-Seed Round for Bee-Less Honey

MeliBio, a startup that makes real honey without the need for bees, announced today that it has raised an $850,000 pre-seed round of funding. Investors in the round include Big Idea Ventures, Joyance Partners, 18.ventures, Sparklabs Cultiv8, Sustainable Food Ventures, Capital V, angel investor Courtney Reum and two mission-driven family…

Video: Melibio’s Darko Mandich on Making Honey Without the Bees

Honey is a$7 billion industry. While honeybees themselves are not in danger (at least today), the focus on honey production is problematic for the broader bee ecosystem since farmed honeybees compete with wild bees for food and ultimately hurt biodiversity. All of this is why a Serbian bee industry executive named Darko…

Making Honey Without The Bee: A Conversation With Darko Mandich

Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that bee colonies are collapsing around the world due to a number of persistent threats such as global warming, pesticides and yes, murder hornets. And while that may present a challenge to the $7 billion honey industry, the focus on…

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Tagged:
  • alt protein
  • bee
  • fermentation
  • honey
  • honey bee
  • precision fermentation

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