So-called "honey laundering" involves elaborate schemes in which cheap, diluted or contaminated honey from China is brought in after being "laundered" in another country to disguise its origin and evade tariffs and health inspections.
A five-month investigation by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper found the international honey trade rife with criminal enterprises designed to take advantage of the demand for imports created by the mysterious collapse of bee colonies across America.
According to the paper, large shipments of tainted honey from China have recently arrived at Western US ports after being repackaged as a product of Russia. Tens of thousands of tons of honey also enter the US each year from countries with few bees and no record of exporting honey such as Singapore and the Bahamas.
Other shipments have come via India, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and even Poland.
The smugglers aim to avoid the health checks, tariffs and import fees imposed on foreign food products that deliberately undercut US domestic prices.
The US Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on honey launderers amid fears that dangerously contaminated honey could slip into the US market and harm consumers. Efforts to tackle honey laundering have also been launched in Russian, India and Australia.
The Post-Intelligencer claims, however, that US inspections of honey imports remain rare and federal officials have yet to adopt a legal definition of honey which makes it hard to keep substandard honey from being sold.
The concern about Chinese honey stems from the use of a toxic antibiotic to fight a contagious bacterial epidemic that raged through hives across China in 1997. The outbreak reduced the country's honey production by two thirds.
The drug, chloramphenicol, has been banned from all food products by the FDA. The administration says tainted honey from China is at the top of its watch list and has issued three "import alerts" to port and border inspectors about tainted Chinese honey.
Officials have also found other antibiotics in Chinese honey and blends of honey syrup and recently warned that corn or cane sugar could also be tainted with bad honey.
The Post-Intelligencer investigation found American distributors who buy and package imported honey were being duped by unscrupulous importers. Meanwhile demand for imported honey continues to rise - US producers supply less than half the amount consumed domestically - and fears about laundering and the potential risks to public health grow.
"There's more crooks than ever, and it has become a real nasty business out there," Elise Gagnon, president of one of North America's largest honey importers and spokeswoman for an international group formed to fight Chinese honey laundering, told the Post-Intelligencer. "They gamble and very, very few -- almost none -- get caught. So they keep corrupting the system."
"Someday, some really harmful honey will be shipped into this country, and a lot of people will get sick or worse - and then the government will do something about it," said David Westervelt, a Florida state apiculture inspector.
"We shouldn't have to wait for people to get sick."