How can you be confident you are buying real Australian Honey?
After all the recent negative publicity around fake honey or adulterated honey, I thought it might be useful or valuable to help you understand how honey is produced and why it is important to buy pure raw honey direct from the beekeeper.

As a small-scale beekeeper, I manage around 100 beehives and produce small batch honey over summer, which I sell myself at farmers markets or through a select few retail outlets. I usually sell out of honey as I only manage to extract a small amount of surplus honey from my hives, and as it’s a seasonal product there is no product available to harvest over winter. As a beekeeper I care for my bees, making sure they have plenty of food and access to clean water and I abide by the Australian Biosecurity Code of Practice for beekeepers. I don’t even wear gloves when I’m working with the bees, so I can be gentle and kind, which means I avoid being stung, as the bees are gentle with me.
Small scale beekeepers like me make up a great proportion of Australian beekeepers, and our honey is available at farmers markets or direct from the beekeeper, or at a few boutique retail stores.

There are also medium and large commercial beekeepers, like me they work hard managing their bees to keep them safe against risks of pests and disease. Many of them will sell direct to the public and may have market stalls, however because most people buy their honey from supermarkets larger scale beekeepers find themselves with more honey than they can sell direct to customers themselves.

To understand what the beekeepers do with their excess honey you need to know how the Australian retail honey market works.

How does the Australian retail honey market work?
The Australian honey brands you buy in the major supermarkets are from businesses know as honey packers, they buy bulk honey from beekeepers at a wholesale price and pack it for sale under their brand. Some of these packers may also manage beehives, but most are simply companies that buy and pack honey.

While the major player in this honey packing space was started by Australian beekeepers (so they could get their honey into the supermarkets), it is now a listed company on the Australian stock exchange and beholden to delivering shareholder profits. Beekeepers no longer have control over the supply chain resulting in honey prices being dictated by the packers rather than beekeepers.

Supply and demand for cheap honey
The problem with this system is that the Australian retail environment is dominated by big box supermarkets, Coles, Woolworths and Aldi in addition to small independents like IGA.
In a previous life I used to be a sales rep to the supermarkets, and so I know first-hand that because of their ability to dominate the market, the big supermarkets dictate terms with anyone who wants to sell to them including what price they pay for products and what rebates or discounts they demand for the privilege of having your product on their shelves.

This unfortunately means pressure on the honey packers to sell honey at a lower price, so the packers then pay the beekeeper an even lower wholesale price. On top of this, there are simply not enough Australian beekeepers to meet consumer demand for honey – we have a growing population! In recent years when honey has been in short supply due to drought or climate conditions honey packers have needed to identify honey sources beyond what is available within Australia. So, some of the packers import honey to fill the gap. This is where things get problematic, because as we know now, imported honey may or may not be 100% pure honey. This problem of supply and demand leaves room for unscrupulous traders to produce fake honey. This issue is not unique to Australia, it is a global problem and beekeepers have been aware of it for years.

So, what is honey?
By definition, “Honey is the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature.” ref: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, you can download the Honey Definition PDF here http://bit.ly/2O3gHMV

So pure honey is produced 100% by bees; it is ripened in the hive, and not in a factory. It is made from plant nectar which the bees collect in the wild, it is not made from anything fed to the bees.

How is honey adulterated?
Fake honey is either a mix of real honey diluted or blended with other sweeteners like corn syrup, rice syrup or beet syrup. Fake honey may also come from bees which are fed with other sugars and sweeteners like corn syrup, rice syrup or beet syrup. This concoction may also be ripened and blended in factories, not in the beehives.

There’s also the problem of labelling. It’s possible that some unscrupulous honey packers are labelling their product as Australian honey when it actually has some imported product in it. This makes it hard for you as a consumer, if the label is false how can you be sure you’re buying 100% honey?

So now you know about the Australian honey market, so if you must still buy honey from the supermarket, read the label and I would recommend avoiding the products which use any imported ingredients. But there is a better option, and that is to go direct to the beekeeper.

Where can you buy 100% pure Australian honey direct from the beekeeper?
Remember the nursery rhyme; “To market, to market to buy a fat pig”? This rhyme talks about shopping for food at the village farmers market. Markets are the traditional way farmers sold their goods and even today there are regular weekly markets around town where you can revisit this tradition. You get to see and buy the best seasonal produce. You get to speak to the farmers and, you can buy pure raw honey, direct from the beekeeper.

Look up Melbourne Farmers Markets or use Google to find the markets closest to where you live.

Buying 100% honey from your local beekeeper is about more than getting the best product. It’s also about supporting small scale producers and ensuring that there are plenty of bees living in your community to pollinate fruit trees, vegetables and other flowers so that your local area has a thriving food production economy. Remember, pollinator bees are responsible for one in every three bites of food we eat!

I look forward to seeing you at the market, where you can taste the freshest honey straight from the hive.