1

Buy Ethical Honey

There’s a huge demand for honey. What used to be a sweet treat has become a breakfast staple – the US consumes somewhere around 1.5 pounds of honey per capita every year. To meet the demand, we import the vast majority from countries who produce honey on an industrial scale, such as China and Thailand.

One of the issues with industrial bee farming is that it doesn’t seem to do the native bee or the hive bee populations much good. Some of the practices, such as the routine use of antibiotics or killing the bees when the honey is harvested, don’t sit comfortably with people who care about animal welfare. Keeping bees in such large, intensive farms has also been linked to problems with hive pests and diseases, which can then transfer to native populations.

Beyond bee health, there are also issues such as poor welfare for bee workers, the impact of food miles, and cheap honey being cut with corn syrup or fructose syrup. According to research, honey is the third most faked food in the world, much of the adulterated product ending up in honey-flavoured foods and products.

The reality is that beekeeping exists on a spectrum – from the intensive and damaging but high yielding at one extreme to conservation beekeeping at the other, where no honey is taken and the bees are left to their own devices (see 41. Learn About Natural Beekeeping). The nearer the conservation end of the scale, the better it is for honey bees, but where does that leave our love of honey? If you want to eat honey, there are a few guidelines to help you make ethical choices that benefit both pollinators and people:

•Buy honey from local beekeepers, who are more likely to practise small-scale, sustainable beekeeping. Many beekeepers are enthusiasts and treat honey as a by-product, not the sole aim.

•If you can’t buy local, look for certified organic or Fairtrade honey – it should at least guarantee better environmental and working conditions.

•Know what you are buying. ‘Pure’ and ‘Natural’ on honey labels mean little in terms of a legal definition, whereas ‘Organic’ and ‘Fairtrade’ have strict criteria. Filtered and pasteurised honey are thought to contain less of the health benefits of raw honey.

•Approach honey like buying wine. Provenance is king. Go for single variety honey, from a specific area, rather than cheaper, blended honey from a mix of countries.