Beekeepers say supermarket honey may not be what you think

Ray Hau, a father of three, is on the hunt for pure, authentic honey.

“You don’t know what’s out there right now. In the supermarket, a lot of them is diluted with water or diluted with all sorts of things, so you can’t beat going to your local farmer,” he said.

Honey is an expensive product and can be targeted by fraudsters looking to make a quick buck with less than genuine products.

Brian Scott owns and operates Innisfil Creek Honey on the 10th Line in Innisfil, Ont. and said honey is particularly susceptible to fraud.

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With honey products in stores sometimes mixed with syrups or sweeteners, consumers may think they’re buying real honey, only to be mislead by unclear labelling or misleading claims on imported products.

“It might not be natural pure honey, it might be adulterated, it might be, you know, a whole bunch of other things, and we just don’t know because a lot of the laws in those country’s are different than ours,” Scott noted.

The Canadian Honey Council says there are about 13,000 beekeepers in Canada producing roughly 75 million pounds of honey every year - half of which is exported.

“We are an honest society. We look at the label, we se what it says, we believe what it says. We don’t do investigation into the product to find out what it really is, so I think a lot of that is trickery on the marketing department,” Scott added.

For consumers looking to avoid potentially diluted products, industry leaders advise buying from local farms, which also supports local agriculture.