Legal definition of honey:
“honey” means the natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera 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 honeycombs to ripen and mature. (The Honey (Scotland) Regulations 2015)
Honey bees collect nectar from plants and store it in honeycomb in order to consume it during the winter when it is too cold for them to fly and there is no nectar from them to forage anyway. To prevent the nectar going off the bees add enzymes to alter the sugars in the nectar and they also dehydrate it, thus turning nectar into what we call honey.
Honey is extracted from honeycomb as a liquid. It is a concentrated solution of sugars in water, with other trace components contributing to the aroma and taste. All honey will eventually crystallise naturally but the time taken to do so ranges from days to years and depends largely on the proportions of different sugars in the honey, which in turn depends on which plants the nectar has come from. Storage temperature also influences crystallisation.
Crystallisation is in fact a good indication of honey quality. Cloudy or crystallised honey can easily be restored to the liquid state by gently warming the jar after first slightly loosening the lid. Do not allow the honey to get hotter than necessary as this may destroy flavour.
‘Set’ honey is initially extracted as liquid honey. However, the sugars tend to crystallise quite rapidly, often into a very hard honey. This is gently rewarmed until soft, then briefly mashed. The honey recrystallises with fine crystals in a loose structure which produces the creamy, buttery, spreadable texture of soft-set honey.
HONEY AUTHENTICITY
Honey is thought to be subject to more fraud globally than any other foodstuff apart from dairy products and olive oil. ‘Honey laundering’ occurs on an industrial scale in some parts of the world. Honey, or possibly even prematurely taken nectar gathered but not yet converted by the bees themselves, is excessively heated to enable fine filtration (which removes pollen). The resulting base ‘honey’ may then be doctored to resemble a specific honey, possibly diluted with a cheaper sugar solution, and sold on in bulk through multiple countries so that its origin is obscure to the eventual packer and retailer. It ends up on supermarket shelves, typically at very low prices. Unfortunately there is no one simple test that confirms the authenticity of honey and the full suite of lab tests are expensive and rarely routinely done.
UK regulations including general trading and food standards, consumer protection and specific regulations about the sale of honey aim to protect the consumer from buying inferior or unsafe honey or paying a high price implied by something the honey is not. Unfortunately the regulations do not require a specific country of origin for imported honey to be identified.
The best way to be assured of good quality honey is to obtain it from local beekeeping sources. It will be more expensive than supermarket honey, reflecting the time and expense that goes into producing it but the vast majority of small-scale, local beekeepers produce a quality, local, entirely natural product that tastes significantly better than low price supermarket honey!
Where to find local honey?
- A local beekeeper if you know one or can track one down, but be aware that not all beekeepers produce sales quality, jarred honey.
- Village shops
- Farmers’ markets
- Country shows
- Garden centre/café-type establishments
Some Frequently-Asked Questions about Honey
‘Raw’ or ‘Pure’ Honey
The UK Honey Regulations make no provision for the use of the terms ‘Raw’ and ‘Pure’. They can thus mean whatever the buyer or seller take them to mean. Use of the terms is discouraged and potentially illegal.
‘Vegan’ Honey
Accepted international definitions of honey including that in the UK Honey Regulations require that it is produced by honey bees. Vegan implies that the food is not produced by animals. ‘Vegan’ and ‘honey’ are therefore mutually contradictory terms; ‘vegan honey’ cannot technically, philosophically and legally exist.
‘Artificial/synthetic’ Honey
As above, as honey bees are not involved in the production of these substances they are not technically and legally honey.
‘Organic’ Honey
As with ‘raw’ and ‘pure’, ‘organic’ is not a defined supplementary term in the honey regulations. But there are strict regulations in the UK for the production and sale of foodstuffs labelled as ‘organic’, generally requiring producer certification by meeting standards set by a Control Body such as The Soil Association. The latter publishes challenging standards for organic beekeeping. If you want to buy UK-produced honey labelled as ‘organic’ then look for a certification number on the label as an indication of authenticity. The vast majority of ‘organic honey’ labelled jars will not have it (or may have it but referring to imported honey) and the producer will typically claim their bees forage on wild or natural land and that they don’t use man-made chemicals in their beekeeping. This is insufficient to meet the requirements of legal ‘organic’ labelling.
For more honey definitions, see the article by Margaret Thomas, NDB
Further Information
- The Honey Authentication Network UK (search ‘HAN UK’) on Facebook
- The Honey (Scotland) Regulations 2015
- Apimondia (International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations)
- ‘The Soil Association Standards – Farming and Growing’ Version 18.7 October 2021