Fraud leaves a bitter taste in honey industry
“We can’t produce all the honey we consume here in the U.S.” — Jon Zawislak.
By Mary Hightower
U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture
Dec. 16, 2024
Fast facts:
- Adulterated imports put squeeze on U.S. honey producers
- Adulteration prompts international bee meeting to nix honey competition
(953 words)
(Newsrooms: With file art of honey being poured into a jar, bees, Zawislak)
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The decision not to hold a honey competition at the World Beekeeping Awards in 2025 is a symptom of a global problem that’s making life tough for beekeepers in the United States, said Jon Zawislak, a bee expert with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
The problem? Honey adulterated with other sugars or altered in ways to avoid trade penalties, has become too common on the world market.
The next Apimondia world congress being held next year in Copenhagen, hosted by Scandinavian beekeeping organizations.
“We will celebrate honey in many ways at the Congress like Global Honey Bar, Regional Honey Map, Global Honey Talks and workshops but honey will no longer be a category, and thus no honey judging, in the World Beekeeping Awards,” Apimondia said in a statement.
“This change, to remove honey as a category in the WBA, was necessitated by the inability to have honey fully tested for adulteration and make awards at the Congress.”
In its statement, Apimondia referred to the 2019 competition in Canada. In that instance, 45 percent of the entries were rejected, including some that were suspected of being adulterated. At the 2023 competition in Chile, five out of the 59 entries were withdrawn from the competition for adulteration.
In 2023, the European Commission found that 46 percent of sampled honeys were suspected to have been diluted with corn, beet or other sugar syrups. In April 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said sampling conducted in 2022-23 found 3 percent of imported honey was found to be adulterated. In testing conducted in 2021-22, 10 percent of samples were found to be adulterated.
U.S. taste for honey
The U.S. imported 429 million pounds of honey in 2023, which represents 73 percent
of total U.S. honey supplies, according to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of the imports — 79 percent — came from
four suppliers: India, Argentina, Brazil and Vietnam, in 2023.
However, the imported honey is not what consumers see on the grocery shelves. This is bulk honey, imported by the barrel, not by the jar.
“We can’t produce all the honey we consume here in the U.S.,” said Zawislak. “So much of it goes into processed foods such as honey-flavored cereals and barbecue sauces — even if honey is last on the ingredient list.”
Honey is a popular ingredient, not just for its flavor, but “because it has such a good reputation as a pure food product,” he said. “That’s what food manufacturers want to emphasize.
Honey adulteration to hide its origins — known as “honey laundering” — has dogged the industry for the past 10-15 years.
“Adulterated honey is actually being dumped in the U.S. market much cheaper than we could produce it here,” Zawislak said. “A lot of beekeepers here were having trouble making ends meet, and they were also dealing with varroa mites — which were also from Asia — and some other diseases, so it was a very tough time for beekeepers.”
At the time, the U.S. put limits on the amount of honey that could be imported from China.
“Suddenly, in southeast Asia, the volume of output miraculously increased,” Zawislak said. “It was suspected that honey was just being put in barrels on trains, moved into another country like Vietnam or Malaysia, or someplace then relabeled as coming from that country, and then shipped over here to get around those import limits and tariffs.”
Then the honey laundering became more sophisticated to get around tests aimed at determining the country of origin.
Small amounts of pollen are generally present in honey and reflect the plants visited by honeybees. The pollen can also help identify where the honey originated. The scientists who conduct this testing are called melissopalynologists.
FDA and other organizations “started testing the pollen that was present in the honey,” Zawislak said. “They could say, well, this particular plant doesn't grow in that country, so we know this honey did not originate in that country.”
Molecular scale
The honey launderers then “started filtering all the honey, removing all the pollen,
then, they would mix in a barrel of honey produced in that country to hide its origin,”
Zawislak said.
While tastebuds might not be able to detect honey cut with high fructose corn syrup, “there are differences in sugars. There are C3 sugars and C4 sugars and it has to do with the isotope of carbon that makes up that sugar molecule. Corn, sugar cane and sorghum are C4 plants,” he said. “It has to do with the method of photosynthesis. Bees gather nectar from C3 plants, including tree and flower blossoms.”
However, these molecular tests are expensive, which adds more pressure to an already pressured U.S. honey industry.
Zawislak said many beekeepers “couldn’t even make ends meet producing honey. The big commercial beekeepers started doing more pollination just to be able to pay their bills. That’s their bread and butter.”
Driving across the Arkansas delta’s backgrounds, it’s not uncommon to see clusters of white boxes near row crop fields where commercial beekeepers have delivered beehives to help farm crops pollinate.
Matter of scale
“When you go to the farmers market and you see honey for $10 a pound, it’s easy to
think there’s some money in it,” Zawislak said. “A lot of people get into beekeeping
with dollar signs in their eyes, and it takes two years to produce any honey, and
you've got a lot of startup costs. It’s not an easy industry by any means.”
Still, Zawislak said consumers looking for pure honey, should buy local. “Get to know your local beekeeper or contact your local extension office if you want to learn how to keep bees.”
To learn more, visit Beekeeping — Apiculture in Arkansas.
\To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs to all eligible persons without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
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Media contact: Mary Hightower, mhightower@uada.edu