For the avoidance of doubt, I am a bee farmer and I run a business that sells honey and bees. My honey customers are local stores and farm shops, although I do sell direct to consumers at one small monthly market in High Legh. In terms of scale, it’s nothing very grand; we sell about 20 nucleus colonies and 4,500 to 5,000 jars of honey each year. I try to avoid selling honey in buckets, but occasionally, I do. I have kept my customer base quite small so that I can sell them my honey, rather than buy it in from another bee farmer. We are planning to get our production colony numbers up to 100, but currently it is about 70.
Beekeepers and their businesses come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you have a few hives in your garden or 2,000 spread across several counties, the chances are that you will be selling honey to somebody. Recent hot summers have helped boost harvests, and ‘local honey’ sold in jars seems to be riding a wave of popularity right now. This is good. Awareness of the differences between types of honey, and of the adulteration of some honey, has grown. This is also good.
‘White labelling’ happens when somebody buys honey, either in bulk or unlabelled jars, and then sells it under their own label. I saw a post on social media the other day telling consumers that white labelling is a bad thing, and that if they really cared about bees, they would buy their honey direct from “real beekeepers”. It is the sort of thing that sounds reasonable, but I think it is wrong in an interesting way. Not wrong in its motives, which are decent, but wrong in its diagnosis. And a wrong diagnosis leads you to campaign for the wrong thing, which in this case means campaigning against the very mechanism that could grow British beekeeping.
Four questions, one label
The problem with the “white labelling is bad” argument is that it collapses four separate questions into one.
| The question | What it actually asks | Does it affect what you eat? |
|---|---|---|
| Authenticity | Is it honey, or is it honey with syrup in it? | Yes |
| Provenance | Which country was it harvested in? | Yes |
| Channel | Did you buy it at the farm gate, a farm shop, or a supermarket? | No |
| Brand ownership | Whose name is on the jar? | No |
Only the first two describe the contents of the jar. The other two describe a business arrangement.
The social media argument treats “own labelling” as a proxy for authenticity, which it isn’t. It also treats direct sale as a proxy for provenance, which it also is not: there is nothing whatsoever stopping a hobby beekeeper from buying in a couple of buckets of honey, jarring it up with a handwritten label, and selling it at a village market. Meanwhile, a supermarket own-label jar filled by a bee farmer in Shropshire is genuinely Shropshire honey, harvested by someone who knows what a queen cell looks like. Whose logo is on the lid tells you very little.
What the label already has to tell you
Regulation 17(1) of the Honey (England) Regulations 2015, and its equivalents in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, say that no person may trade in honey unless the country of origin where the honey was harvested is on the label. There is no exemption for own-label. No exemption for contract packing. No exemption for pre-packed for direct sale. Moreover, food information rules require a named food business operator with a UK address, so there is always somebody legally accountable.
The rules go further than many beekeepers realise:
| Claim on the jar | What the law requires |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | Mandatory, but blends may use a generic descriptor |
| Floral source (“heather”, “borage”) | The honey must come wholly or mainly from that source, and possess the organoleptic, chemical and microscopic characteristics of it |
| Territorial origin (“Cheshire honey”) | The honey must come entirely from the stated origin |
| Who is responsible | Name and address of the food business operator |
So a white labelled jar of British honey is a jar of honey that is legally declared as British, with a traceable operator behind it, and a floral claim that can be tested. The law polices everything that matters for single-origin honey, and the gap is blends, which is exactly what the EU has just closed and we have not.
The real problem, which is not white labelling
There is a serious problem in the honey trade. It is just not the one some people are shouting about. In 2023, the European Commission published the results of a coordinated action called “From the Hives”. Of 320 consignments sampled at EU borders, 46% were suspected of not complying with the Honey Directive. Turkey had the highest proportion of suspect consignments, at 93%. And honey imported into the EU from the United Kingdom had a suspicion rate of 100%.
That figure gets quoted a lot, but it sounds worse than it is. The Commission attributes it to honey produced in other countries and then blended in the UK before re-export. Only ten samples were tested, no exporters were named, and it is not a finding about honey harvested by British bees.
A packer who blends honey from four countries into one tank and labels it “blend of honeys from more than one country” has destroyed the information you needed. A packer who fills a farm shop’s own-brand jars with honey from one Cheshire bee farmer has not.
However, it has to be said that the majority of white labelled honey sold in the UK is, in fact, the cheap imported stuff. The branding can often make the honey seem to be from a quaint rural English village, when it really comes from China. But, if you look closely, it will say “a blend of EU and non-EU honeys” or something similar on the label. For those seeking real honey from British beekeepers, the problem is not white labelling, but misleading or unclear labelling, and blending honeys from multiple countries including honey adulterated with sugar syrup.
A word about the numbers
The temptation in beekeeping is to grab whatever number supports the case and run with it. It’s actually quite difficult to find out even fairly basic details about UK beekeeping and the honey industry.
| Source | What it found | How much weight it carries |
|---|---|---|
| EU “From the Hives”, 2023 | 46% of 320 border samples suspicious; UK re-exports 100% of 10 | Official regulatory data, but the methods are contested and the UK sample is tiny |
| Honey Authenticity Network UK, 2024 | 24 of 25 imported supermarket jars failed; all 5 UK beekeeper samples passed | Interesting, but five UK samples is an illustration, not a finding |
| Government Chemist review of a 2020 survey | You could not determine authenticity from the data used, and a claim of adulteration should not have been made | Peer reviewed, and a useful warning against over-claiming |
The Food Standards Agency’s own position is that no single test can definitively confirm honey’s authenticity because honey is naturally variable and non-targeted screening methods are difficult to interpret against reference databases.
The earlier EU control plan found 14%. The later one found 46%. The JRC itself notes that it used different methods with improved detection capability, which may explain the increase. That is not necessarily a measured increase in fraud. It may be, but it may not. However, even if the situation has not deteriorated, 46% is not a number to be relaxed about.
The UK honey market
The Bee Farmers’ Association (BFA) reckons the UK produces around 14% of the honey consumed in the domestic market. The European average is around 60%. In 2023, the UK imported roughly 51,000 tonnes, of which around 39,000 tonnes came from China.
That chart is a reconstruction rather than an official statistic because here is an uncomfortable fact: there is no official UK honey production figure. Defra does not collect one. Published estimates range from under 3,000 tonnes in a bad year to 12,000 tonnes.
Now consider what the “buy direct from real beekeepers” model means in practice.
Take a bee farmer with 20 tonnes of honey per year. Paul Horton, my co-author of Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives, did that last season with 250 colonies, using a highly migratory approach. Admittedly, he is something of an outlier. That crop goes into buckets and is stored until needed. There is no farmers’ market in Britain that will absorb 20 tonnes (about 59,000 12 oz jars), and I don’t think an online store would do it either. Plus, you would need a packing and fulfilment business as well as a bee farming one. Some people focus on tending to the bees and producing the honey, while others specialise in packing, marketing and so on. It’s very hard to do both.
Now consider the smaller end of the market. A producer with 800 lbs sells out by January. Their customers, who have developed the habit of eating local honey, walk into the farm shop in February and find the shelf empty. Well, more likely it is stocked with honey from another source. They buy something else, and next season they may not come back. Continuity of supply is the difference between a customer base and a seasonal novelty, like fireworks or mince pies.
White labelling solves both problems. It lets the 20 tonne producer sell honey without becoming a marketing, packing and distribution company, and it lets the small retailer keep British honey on the shelf all year. There is a cascade of honey through the system from the large honey producers to smaller ones and then to consumers. I know that several small honey producers, popular on Instagram, are buying in a lot of honey from other bee farmers. Their success at marketing has overtaken their ability to meet demand from their own hives. It’s still good honey, from this country, from real bees and not messed about with. I don’t know if that is a bad thing, really. Is it?
Many bee farmers sell honey both in jars and in bulk. Even after the additional costs of jarring and labelling, the profit margin on jars, per kilogram sold, will be higher. However, a smaller margin on a larger volume sold works well for many people. One argument for buying honey direct from the beekeeper is that the money is supporting that business, often a local one. When you buy a white labelled jar a smaller part finds its way to the beekeeper, with the difference going to packers and retailers instead.
Unintended consequences?
If you believe that consumers should only buy honey from real beekeepers selling their own honey, there are far-reaching consequences. Market structure determines colony numbers.
If the only respectable route to market is a beekeeper selling their own jars direct, then the ceiling on UK honey production is set by how much honey can be sold that way, not by how much forage this country has. That puts a cap on the number of colonies managed by beekeepers. What’s the point of running 500 colonies if you can’t sell the vast quantity of honey that such an endeavour produces?
If we want our supermarkets to sell more British honey rather than imported, we have to consider how they are set up. Do they want to deal with hundreds of small-scale beekeepers who sometimes have honey to sell, sometimes not? All with different types of honey jar, different labels of varying quality, and different types of honey, also of variable quality. Or do they need the stability and certainty of a handful of larger suppliers?
Only buying from beekeepers who sell their own honey is a formula for shrinking the existing UK honey industry and keeping UK beekeeping small. It means that much of the glorious honey that could be made from the vast amounts of available forage would not get made, and we would be looking at even more imports.
The ‘Local Honey’ situation
There is no question that our green and pleasant land can produce a kaleidoscope of different honey types. The forage is vast and variable, the weather unpredictable, and each season is different. The National Honey Monitoring Scheme, run by UKCEH, has DNA barcoded thousands of honey samples submitted by beekeepers. The first UK-wide analysis identified pollen from around 1,000 plant types, with an average of 28 species per sample, and found significant regional differences.
However, all this variation in flora is determined by the landscape. Two apiaries ten miles apart in Cheshire, one sitting on arable land, one on the edge of dairy farmland, will differ from each other more than a Cheshire arable site differs from a Shropshire one. Do you really think that oilseed rape honey from one area is so different from the same thing grown 50 or 100 miles away? “Produced within five miles of you” tells you little about the qualities of the honey in the jar. Forage type, landscape, and season are what matter. Having said that, being completely objective, my honey is the best!
| What “local” is often claimed to buy you | Does it? |
|---|---|
| Honey that is noticeably different from honey 40 miles away | Sometimes, but landscape matters far more than distance |
| Relief from hay fever | No good evidence |
| Fresher honey, less time in bulk, fewer warming cycles | Sometimes. This is a reasonable argument for buying direct |
| Money going to a beekeeper rather than a trader | Yes, and that is a perfectly good reason |
| Assurance the honey is real | Only if you trust that particular person |
The pollen that bees bring home in their little baskets on their legs goes into cells alongside brood and gets eaten by nurse bees. It does not end up in the honey, except accidentally; grains shed into nectar during foraging, plus airborne pollen that has settled on flowers and been swept up with the nectar. So, the pollen found in honey by analysis is not necessarily going to accurately reflect what the bees chose to work, but it’s what we’ve got.
The point from a hay fever perspective is that the amount of pollen in honey is very small. There does not appear to be credible evidence showing that honey consumption prevents hay fever. In a Finnish birch pollen study, the researchers had to add birch pollen to the honey. If ordinary honey already carried a useful dose, they would not have needed to. Meanwhile, when local honey has been put up against a placebo properly, in a double blind trial comparing local unfiltered honey, nationally produced filtered honey and honey-flavoured corn syrup, there was no difference in symptoms between the three.
The EU is ahead of us
Since 14 June 2026, EU Directive 2024/1438 has been in force. Honey blends sold in the EU must now list every country of origin, in the principal field of vision, in descending order by weight, with the percentage each contributes. No more “blend of EU and non-EU honeys”, a phrase which, as somebody once astutely observed, only tells you it came from planet Earth. Come to think of it, if there is honey being made elsewhere in the universe, it could include that too.
That directive applies in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework. It does not apply in Great Britain, and as far as I can tell, the government has made no commitment to match it. I did find this, from the then farming minister, Daniel Zeichner, who said in July 2025:
”At the UK-EU Summit on 19 May 2025, the UK and EU agreed to work towards a UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (‘SPS Agreement’) to make agrifood trade with our biggest market cheaper and easier, cutting costs and red tape for British producers and retailers. The scope of the agreement remains subject to negotiation but is expected to include key marketing and compositional standards, including rules on honey. Common rules on honey would pave the way for easier and smoother trading both across the UK and with the EU.”
Based on this, if Britain does align with the EU honey labelling laws, it will be as part of a much wider negotiation. The breakdown of honey origin in the EU is great for consumers, and probably quite a pain in the posterior for packers. Not only is it an extra burden to alter the label, but it could have consequences for demand, and hence pricing. Costs up, demand down; it might cause a few headaches. On balance, most likely a good thing (but I’m not a packer). I should also add that (a) not everyone can afford £7 to £10 per jar and (b) some people actually like the cheap imported stuff.
So what should the message be?
Advising people to only “buy from small beekeepers” is not quite right, nor is the idea that white labelling is somehow bad. I think the message should be the following (and you are free to thoroughly disagree, of course):
- Buy honey harvested in the UK. That is the scarce thing. It is 14% of the market, and it is the bit that supports British bees and British beekeepers, at any scale.
- Read the origin line, not the brand. If it says something like “blend of honeys from more than one country”, you are not buying British honey.
- Judge the beekeeper, not the business model. A 200-hive bee farmer supplying a farm shop’s own label is a real beekeeper. So is the chap with six hives at the allotment. The label does not need to differentiate.
- Support origin percentage labelling in Great Britain. This is the reform that would actually change something.
That social media post which prompted this was written by somebody who, I suspect, wants the same thing I do: more British honey, from British bees, sold honestly. We are on the same side. I just think the target is wrong, and that in a market where 86% of honey eaten here arrives in a shipping container, British beekeeping cannot afford to spend its credibility on arguments about typography.
Sources
- Honey (England) Regulations 2015, regulation 17, and the Wales, Scotland and NI equivalents: legislation.gov.uk
- Plain English summary of honey labelling law: Business Companion
- EU coordinated action “From the Hives”, findings and methodology: European Commission, DG SANTE and Joint Research Centre
- OLAF’s account of the same operation: OLAF Report 2023
- FSA on the limits of authenticity testing: FSA blog, February 2025 and Government Chemist review, 2022
- HAN UK testing results: BBKA press release
- UK share of the domestic market: Bee Farmers’ Association
- National Honey Monitoring Scheme results: honey-monitoring.ac.uk and UKCEH regional findings
- Hay fever modulated by consumption of honey? Clinical trial says no, but it was a small sample size. In a Finnish birch pollen study pollen was artificially added to the honey
- Directive (EU) 2024/1438 and what it requires: EUR-Lex summary
- Northern Ireland application and the GB position: Parliamentary written answer, July 2025
- Pollen in honey is largely incidental rather than corbicular: CSI Pollen, Insects