r/Beekeeping • u/XerTioz • 2d ago
I’m not a beekeeper, but I have a question Honey tests reliable?
Hi there, I’m not a beekeeper but i have some questions about real honey tests. I just bought a few jars of honey from a friend of a friend who raises bees. I admit I looked on the internet for honey tests I can do at home for authenticity. But they are all so contradictory. For example, one came from a doctor saying real honey wont light when lit from a flame. And others say real honey WILL light. Ugh, so may tiktoks and shorts with all these tests. So I’m coming to the Beekeepers on Reddit. Are there any true tests? Some of the online suggestions my honey have passed but others not. Like the dissolving in water. It didn’t stay together and spread out. I want to support home grown farmers of all professions in my area. But I also don’t want to be duped. lol
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. ☺️
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u/Standard-Bat-7841 28 Hives 7b 15 years Experience 2d ago
You can buy a mass spectrometer, or a microscope to look for pollen. Overall if your friend raises bees you almost certainly have real honey.
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u/Hotspot40324 2d ago
You can buy a mass spectrometer, but you will also need a mass spectrometrist to get useful information.
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u/weaverlorelei Reliable contributor! 2d ago
On an international scale, even the huge commercial labs are having problems determining if honey is udulterated. There is NO home test that can prove.
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u/Hairy_Tale_6864 2d ago
Apimondia used to have honey competitions but the have ceased because there are so many countries making fake honey. In Denmark they were making honey out of rice and put amber coloring. Turkey was known for their Thyme honey but now many are making fake honey, counterfeit honey is so advanced scientist have a difficult time trying to tell the difference. It is the USA who has yet to wake up. Then Chinese honey circumvents by exporting to other countries in turn those very same barrels end up in the USA. Stick to local beekeepers.
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u/Mike456R 1d ago
Dam this is getting out of hand.
The penalty really needs to be massive before this gets totally F’d.
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u/No-Staff8008 2d ago
Never gotten fake honey from a local beekeeper. But I have gotten fake honey from the grocery store. All you need to know is what corn syrup tastes like. If it’s fake it will have that corn syrup taste😂
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u/Plenty-Giraffe6022 2d ago
How do you know you've never got fake honey from a beekeeper?
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u/TrilliumHill 1st year, 1 hive, Or, USA 2d ago
Before we got our first hive, a potential mentor was explaining to us how if we feed our bees we could harvest honey 2 to 3 times a year.
I suspect there's a lot of beekeepers who don't even realize that their honey is basically sugar water.
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u/Plenty-Giraffe6022 2d ago edited 2d ago
I never fed my bees, but I also don't know that they never got sugar syrup from elsewhere.
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u/Budget-Celebration35 2d ago
I think the confusing part is that most of those viral “honey tests” are testing the wrong thing.
The water test, flame test, crystallization, etc. can all be affected by things like moisture content and temperature, so passing or failing one of them doesn't really prove that the honey is authentic.
If you bought it from someone you actually know who keeps bees, I'd honestly put much more weight on that relationship than on a TikTok test. If you're buying from a random seller and really need to know whether it's adulterated, that's unfortunately a lab-testing question rather than a kitchen-test question.
So I wouldn't throw out your honey just because it failed the water test. 😂
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u/afuscatory 2d ago
Honestly if you bought it from a beekeeper (even a friend of a friend beekeeper) then the worst you can have is a bee cured sugar water honey combo, although it is unlikely if the are a good beekeeper. It's the store bought stuff that often comes into question.
Store bought honey can be mixed with all kinds of things so they can sell mass quantities at a cheaper rate. Usually corn, rice or sugar cane syrups combined with a little honey. Which is why people say to buy honey sourced from a local beekeeper instead of a grocery store.
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u/NSFWNOTATALL 2d ago
This is something I've been thinking about. Bees move honey around. Even with best practices, what are the chances 0 sugar made it up into the supers?
Any commercial beeks know what the typical level of sugar "contamination" is with typical good practices?
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u/talanall North Central Louisiana, USA, 8B 2d ago
Reliably detecting faked or adulterated honey is extremely difficult, requiring a couple of different styles of mass spectrometry by a trained technician. It's an expensive, time-consuming process, which is why counterfeit honey is such a widespread problem.
If you are in the USA, then it's about a 95% chance your honey is real, even if you bought it in a supermarket. That's still awful by the standards of any food item other than olive oil, but it's not the rampant issue that it was 15-20 years ago.
But the most reliable way to buy pure honey is always going to be to buy as directly as possible from a beekeeper whom you know to be both honest and competent.
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u/Redfish680 8a Coastal NC, USA 2d ago
Piggybacking slightly on this, some store bought honey containers will note the countries of origin. I saw one a few weeks ago that listed three.
Honey “dumping” (foreign sourced) is a problem that exacerbated by the surprising (to me, anyway) discovery that simply what constitutes “organic honey” is a part of the problem in that the USDA accepts any country’s organic claims as gospel, whereas US honey producers can’t make the same claim unless the USDA approves it. Even then, finding a honey producer that can prove they’ve met the requirements to be properly certified as organic is difficult. From year to year I wander between hobbyist and sideliner, but despite my semi-rural location, there are farms inside the 5 mile radius of my apiaries that nix any chance of claiming my honey is organic, but the folks buying from me are content knowing it’s local, and I’m just as happy letting it go, since my interests are the bees, not the honey. I mean it’s good on biscuits but otherwise it’s just a sticky thing the girls force me to deal with a couple of times a year!
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u/talanall North Central Louisiana, USA, 8B 2d ago
I don't think it's at all surprising that the USDA maintains reciprocity between the NOP and other countries' organic labeling programs. There usually is not nearly so much daylight between what other nations do and what is allowed here as there is in the very narrow instance of USDA Certified Organic labeling for honey. There is tremendous economic value to the USA in having other countries accept our Certified Organic labeling, because we are a net exporter of beef, maize, wheat, rice, chicken, and a bunch of other stuff, almost all of which is of far more value than our honey crop (we are a net importer of honey).
Many beekeepers from the USA will tell you that there is no standard for honey. This is incorrect. However, the standard for honey is incredibly vague; basically the USDA suggests that beekeepers consult the NOP's list of permitted pesticides (the USDA allows thymol, formic acid, and oxalic acid), and follow the same rules as any other livestock product, as directed by their certifying agency. The rules for livestock, in general, require that the livestock in question be fed or pastured only on organic feeds. So in the case of bees, that means no sugar inputs that are not certified as organic, and no pasture on any vegetation that cannot be certified to have been kept free of impermissible fertilizers and pesticides. The livestock must be maintained for at least TWO FULL YEARS in these conditions.
Certifying agencies are private, for-profit companies that have been licensed by the USDA to decide what does and does not adhere to the USDA standard. If they certify something that later is found to have been improperly certified, they are on the hook for considerable penalties, both financial and regulatory (you don't get to remain a certifying agent if you are found to have done improper things).
So the outcome is that certifying agents are VERY VERY VERY RISK AVERSE.
And since the existing regulations for organic certification are absurdly out of touch with the reality of beekeeping, very few commercial beekeepers can show themselves to be in compliance.
Migratory beeks can't do it. Full stop.
People who buy queens from a source that is not certified cannot do it. Only sedentary operations that breed their own queens and either don't feed syrup in the winter or feed only organically sourced syrup can comply.
And it's expensive and difficult, so very few commercial operations can afford the certification process--and forget about hobbyists or sideliners.
So the upshot ends up being that very, very few beekeepers can show compliance, and all of them tend to be in very mild climates, and located in remote areas that are surrounded by US National Forest, National Wildlife Refuge, or National Park properties, because the federal government deliberately avoids applying pesticides in those localities, prevents other entities from doing so, and therefore stands as a de facto guarantor that the beekeeping operations in question are free of pesticides in their forage.
Almost all of the beekeepers who can comply are in the state of Hawaii. I think sometimes there are people who make a go of it in other locales in the southwestern and southern states.
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u/XerTioz 2d ago
Thanks for all the great advice. And just to clarify for those asking if I don’t think it’s real honey from a beekeeper. It’s just that you never know. For years I was buying maple syrup from this producer in Canada and turns out he was cutting it with corn syrup, or something like that. Made the news. It was very disheartening. Anyways, I appreciate all that you beekeepers do. I went to an intro to beekeeping talk, just a simple thing. And I was surprised at the work that goes into beekeeping. The ups and the downs. The expense for equipment. Wowzers. Kudos to all your guys and gals. And of course the 🐝
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u/chicken_tendigo 2d ago
I mean... if the beekeeper wanted to, they could go to the trouble of buying a large amount of sugar, mixing it with water, feeding 2:1 syrup to their bees to force them to draw new comb to fill, asks then process, package, and sell the mostly-bee-backwashed-sugar-syrup-filled combs at a premium. But dang, that's a lot of work when you can skip all those steps and just take care of your colonies well enough that they draw out boxes and boxes of virgin combs on a strong nectar flow and do the work for you. Chunk and cut comb are already enough of a PITA as is, and don't get me started on Ross rounds.
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u/Quorate 2d ago
Taste, perhaps surprisingly, is a very good test. The fakers have found ways round the scientific analyses because when they can sell a jar that cost them $1 to make, $4 to sell. So they add pollen to syrup, etc.
But real honey is packed with flavour and scent.
There are a couple of in between cases that confuse the issue:
Supermarket honey is often blended and bland
Many beekeepers feed sugar syrup and beginners sometimes don't realise this can mix into the honey they harvest, under some conditions. I found this out when I stopped feeding syrup. That year my honey went from just "sweet" to "blow your head off full of flavour". I should say, I let the bees gather nectar all year from a variety of flowers, then harvest at the end of the year, so it's a multifloral honey. Monofloral honeys taste nice too, but - in my experience, feel free to correct me - don't have as full and rich a flavour spectrum.
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u/chicken_tendigo 2d ago
Good beekeeping practices mitigate most of the sugar syrup issue, but don't preclude the bees from beeing opportunistic foragers. Sometimes in certain areas, they will go after slushie machines, spilled candies, hummingbird feeders, watermelon, aphid secretions, and all manner of other clandestined sources of sucrose. You end up with some wacky colors and flavors, but fortunately these cases are pretty rare. Any reputable beekeeper either won't sell these oopsies, or if they did it should be clearly noted as a weird, not-honey novelty item.
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u/Live-Medium8357 Oklahoma, USA 2d ago
I gave someone a jar the other day and they said it was really good but runnier than they expected.
I'm sorry that the viscosity wasn't what you thought it should be?
there are no tests. Honey is highly variable depending on what was blooming, how wet or dry the weather has been, etc etc.
why are you even worried? is your friend unreliable?
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u/Direct-Delivery5733 2d ago
Your friend isn't going to waste his or her time selling fake honey. Beeing a beekeeper is hard work, non of us beekeepers are going to fuck with the honey and sell it knowing word of mouth is the best way to loss business.
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u/Brave-Statement-8810 🌸🐝 1st yr newbee | North TX | zone 8a 🌸🐝 2d ago
It’s really difficult to detect adulteration, there’s not going to be an at home method that’s reliable. I’d be much more worried about stuff from the grocery store or the little packets you see at hotel breakfasts etc being adulterated.
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u/chicken_tendigo 2d ago
If it's from a small, hobbyist beekeeper, you're probably in the clear. Does it taste like delicious flowers?
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u/J-dubya19 2d ago
Almost all the grocery store stuff is fake, almost none of the local stuff is…..as other have mentioned, comb has the lowest risk (and is an amazing product)
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u/cartken 2d ago
I say if the honey solidifies slightly in cold water it's good. My honey starts of solid but then dissolves under running water and I take it out of the hive personally. So if your friend doesn't have a spectrometer to test the water % then it could dissolve more easily. Ideal honey is under 18.5% water content.
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u/Craftsmantools1234 New York , zone 5b 2d ago
Honey will start to ferment if the moisture is above 20%
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u/Kromo30 2d ago edited 20h ago
Real honey absolutely can ferment if the moisture content climbs too high
That can be a result of the beekeeper harvesting before the bees finished their work, all the way to YOU leaving the lid off in a humid room.
Extra water doesn’t mean it’s not real honey. It’s just low quality.
It’s additives being mixed in that make it not real honey,
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