How the rampant rise in counterfeit honey is decimating local beekeepers and pollination processes
Honey is generally considered a healthy food product, high in nutrients and antioxidants. Sometimes, honey is infused with propolis, which is a resin produced by bees and has been connected in scientific studies with improved cholesterol levels, lowered blood pressure, and anti-allergic effects.
But recent studies and reports point to a worrying trend: much of the so-called honey being sold on shelves at grocery stores in Europe is not, in fact, honey.
Rather, much of what is labelled as honey is highly convincing sugar syrup — a product that can be produced at about one-fifth of the cost of real honey production.
Many of these honey counterfeits are so convincing that they have successfully flown under the radar of European regulation and oversight. In 2023, the European Anti-Fraud Office found that 46% of honey samples they tested were adulterated in some way, while in late 2024, the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations declared for the first time in history that they would not be awarding a prize for honey in 2025, due to the scale of fraudulent honey/sugar syrup counterfeits on the market.
How did we get here?
The top five global honey suppliers are, in order, China, Turkey, Ethiopia, Iran, and India. But the finger cannot solely be pointed to suppliers — after all, in a highly interconnected global economy such as this one, we all contribute to the game of supply and demand. The UK, for instance, is China’s biggest honey customer, importing in 2023 39,000 tons of honey.
As previously mentioned, the cost of producing sugar syrup is much lower than producing real honey. We at Project B are small-scale honey producers ourselves and can very much attest to this. “If you really want to turn honey production into a viable business, you need to have at least 100 bee colonies. This is an expensive undertaking in and of itself, and then when you add ‘locally-made’ and ‘organic’ to the mix, this brings up those prices further,” says Leopold Winkler, Project B’s certified beekeeper. “When you have a near-identical product on the market that can be produced and sold at a quarter of that price, real honey becomes a tough sell.”
But at what cost?
It might taste the same, or even look the same (although it is often the case that commercially produced honeys look picture perfect, like the photo above, while locally-produced, real, raw honey may have more perceivable imperfections), but there are other considerations at play.
Not only do these cheaper counterfeits negatively impact local food producers, and therefore local economies, they are also taking away from pollination — a key consideration when discussing the subject of honey.
In 2024, the European Beekeeping Association called on the European Union to address this issue, underscoring the link between protecting local beekeepers and protecting pollination: “The collapse of beekeepers means the collapse of bees and consequently the end of the pollination service of bees, which is a prerequisite for food production in Europe, as every third spoonful of food depends on bee pollination!”
How can we fix this?
As it stands, the European Union is cracking down further on honey imports. However,
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4 Responses
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