BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Adulterated honey

  • Environmental issues and concerns that affect beekeeping.
Environmental issues and concerns that affect beekeeping.
 #12470  by AdamD
 27 Feb 2022, 20:31
I think we are all aware that our own honey is highly regarded and that much imported honey is adulterated.
There is a petition that's been started by the BBKA which hopes to look into those concerns.


"We are challenging the labeling laws. We want to know where the honey in our shops has come from; was it from the bees visiting 1000s of flowers to collect and process their Honey or is it a mixture containing complex sugars and chemicals disguising the fact that it contains little or no Honey. We do know that China is responsible for selling tons of ‘fake‘ honey to Europe. We do not at the moment produce sufficient Honey to meet demand and some Honey needs to be imported, but some imported Honey found on shelves in major supermarkets has additives and is not pure Honey. Samples of 1lb jars of imported honey were purchased in 13 of our major supermarkets and sent to Germany where the complex ingredients found in ‘Fake’ honey can be identified. They all failed the test of being 100% Honey. Our supermarkets are buying honey from the EU which do not have the country or countries of origin clearly stated on the label. The sampling by the English Food Standards Agency of the imports into England cannot detect the sophisticated disguise used to sell this ‘Fake’ Honey; we do not at the moment have facilities available for this".

The petition is here:-
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/607735
 #12474  by MickBBKA
 28 Feb 2022, 02:59
It doesn't take a scientist to work out that honey being sold at 59p / lb in a supermarket is a problem. At £5.00 a jar we are probably not covering costs for our hobby / business. Its time that the BBKA sought to pressure government and food industry to pay beekeepers a living wage for their product. Milk, Meat, Veg and Fish are all undervalued by foreign imports. Its about time our national organisation and our government supported local produce. It lowers food miles and helps our environment. I estimate my bees visited over 2.5 Billion flowers last year. That's nuts, berries and fruit for a multitude of other creatures. Until beekeepers value their product and stop giving it away for stupid prices that haven't changed for 20 years and supermarkets are still allowed to sell sugar syrup as honey then we will never make our industry pay for itself. Manuka and Organic anyone ?????