I read a recent article in The Grocer about the honey authenticity debate with great interest.
One argument that repeatedly appears in the discussion is that mechanical dehydration of honey explains why some honey can be produced significantly cheaper.
This explanation is misleading.
Mechanical drying does not increase the amount of nectar collected by bees, nor does it increase the biological production capacity of a colony. Bees still need to collect nectar from flowering plants, and nectar flows are limited by ecology, climate and seasonal conditions.
In reality, honey is a finite natural resource produced by bees, and global supply depends heavily on weather and plant nectar secretion. In many regions beekeepers experience large year-to-year fluctuations and often cannot meet growing demand.
Demand for honey has been increasing for decades. When supply cannot keep up, market pressure creates opportunities for fraud. Over time this has evolved into increasingly sophisticatedly designed sugar syrups that can be blended with honey or sold in products presented as honey.
Today the global honey market has become heavily distorted by these practices, where engineered syrups are used to imitate or dilute honey. As a result, many honest beekeepers have been pushed out of the market through unfair competition.
Another important issue is the widespread use of ‘blends of honeys from multiple countries’. While this is often presented as normal industry practice, such blends make the supply chain opaque. Behind these blends, engineered syrups can be used to create products that resemble honey but are significantly cheaper to produce.
Mechanical dehydration is often used as a narrative explaining low prices, but it does not fundamentally change the economics of honey production.
There is simply no unlimited nectar flow anywhere in the world, and therefore no genuinely cheap honey at industrial scale.
If the honey in jars were once again required to be real honey at the scale the global market currently claims, rebuilding global beekeeping capacity to that level would likely take decades. Years of market distortion caused by syrup-based products have pushed many honest beekeepers out of production, and restoring authentic supply cannot happen overnight.
Whether the UK relies on imports because domestic production is insufficient, or whether the market structure has been distorted by syrup-based products sold as honey, is a question that readers and regulators may increasingly ask.
Peeter Matson is an Estonian honey producer
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