Something that many of you already know is that our beloved honeybees have been dying off at an alarming rate and that means that real, pure honey is in limited supply. Domestic honey production is only about 20% of domestic consumption and it has been proven over and over that much of the imported honey (certainly not all, but much) is diluted with some sort of other sweetener such as rice syrup (check out all the different colors and shades of rice syrup for sale by doing a search on your favorite search engine).
If you care to do further verification, check out the trends at the World Trade Organization. It lists countries, number of managed honeybee colonies by year and related honey exports. Many of the countries that export millions of pounds of honey to the United States, report small or declining numbers of managed honeybee colonies. So draw your own conclusions on what’s actually being exported from those countries. Do you believe with 100% certainty that it is 100% pure honey? It may not be worth your time to do that sort of research, but the information is out there nevertheless.
Honeybees pollinate nearly 1 in every three bites of food we eat and the best way to support honeybee health is to buy real, domestically produced honey. The FDA does have labeling guidelines for honey, but many honey labels are vague or deceptive or miguiding and some labeling guidelines can be interpreted in different ways. Again, if you are the sort of person that likes to research on your own, you can download the FDA’s honey labeling guidelines. Remember, 75% of the honey on your local grocery store’s shelf is imported and much of that imported honey is coming from countries with disproportionally small number of honeybee colonies.
Buy domestic honey that tastes good! It’s a tasty treat, snack, and condiment and you will be helping to save the honeybees that pollinate the majority of our food supply.