Beware fake honey!

You may already know that the majority of supermarket honey, including that produced by most of the leading brands, has been adulterated with other sugars or vegetable syrups. In fact the cheapest supermarket 'honey' may cost under £1 but probably contains very little actual honey at all, and this won't have been declared on the label... The supermarkets or name-brands may not intentionally add these sugars themselves, but their suppliers, largely from China, routinely do. In recent tests, 320 brands sampled throughout Europe, over 50% were found to be suspicious, and of 10 leading UK brands, all ten failed! Remarkably there is currently no UK legislation which requires distributors to test the purity of honey, or to declare exactly which countries it has been sourced from, so they hide behind cheap 'blends' from multiple countries. Some testing is undertaken, but multiple expensive tests are required to detect all forms of cheating and suppliers constantly find loopholes or new sweeteners which do not show up conclusively on all tests. The more blending that has occurred, the more likelihood of fake alternatives having been slipped into the mix. The worst offenders are honeys produced outside the UK or EU, so be especially wary of jars stating, for instance, that they are "a blend of EU and non EU honey" as these will at least partly come from countries with a known history of honey fraud.  

There is lots of information online about the problems and challenges of honey fraud, but here are a few articles. This from The Guardian in 2021 and from the Daily Mail in 2021 another from The Guardian in 2023 and from Which in 2023. See also episode 1 of the Netflix series Rotten.

The best solution is to buy honey which comes direct from a local beekeeper!

We label our honey as either "Hartwell Honey", "Tamar Valley Honey" or "Devon Honey" - but it's all the same high quality 100% authentic honey produced here in Devon exclusively by our bees.