Brands to Ban

[Bakersdozen]

We beekeepers, in good years, are fortunate enough to be able to avoid supermarket honey.  For those of you that proselytize about the health benefits of a local beekeepers honey to friends, family, customers, etc.  here is a list of honey brands that the Food Safety News consistently didn't find a trace of pollen in.  I could go on about honey hacking and that labels lie, but that would be preaching to the choir.  Here is a pdf file with a list of name brands to avoid.

www.FoodSafetyNews.com/honey-without-po ... -news1.pdf

*apologies, I don't know how to insert a link in this new forum...yet.  Maybe iddee can assist?  Copy and paste will have to work for now.

If anyone prints out a flyer or honey recipes to hand out at their local Farmer's Market or with each sale of honey, you might consider adding this.

[iddee]

Just put www.  before it.

[riverbee]

thanks for the pdf file!  great info!  will keep and print off!

[G3farms]

It would have been good if they listed all of the brands that WERE tested. This list leads you to believe that "if not on the list it must have passed" type of thinking.

[apisbees]

The lack of pollen in honey does not prove that there is anything wrong with the honeys listed from the companies on the list. Sue Bee is a beekeepers honey co-op and even that they ultra filter their honey doesn't mean that there is anything else than pure honey in the jar. My sister in-law who has severe alleges to almost all pollens can not eat my pollen filled honeys where she does not have any reaction from ultra  filtered honey from Bee-maid Honey, who is the beekeepers Co-op of the Canadian Prairie Provinces. When we put the label Pure Honey on our jars along with the nutritional information. Pollen should not be present in our honey. IMHO.

[Bakersdozen]

It would have been good if they listed all of the brands that WERE tested. This list leads you to believe that "if not on the list it must have passed" type of thinking.

Agree G3.  The lack of a date when the testing took place concerned me.
Apisbees, thanks for the clarification.  I was certainly surprised to see SueBee Honey on the list.  That brand has been around for since I was a child.  There are some names on the list that I have seen listed elsewhere.  The history of the contents, in those brands, is somewhat muttled.  Either way, it's still good to know that some brands don't contain any pollen.

[G3farms]

Just another question.......if the pollen is strained out of the honey, is it then collected and sold? I am sure that it is since there is a demand for it in health food stores or even making up pollen patties for sale back to beekeepers. Honey without pollen seems kind of funny to me though, taking part of the ingredient out and still having the same product  :?: :?  :?:

Could somebody name something else that if you removed part of the ingredients that you still come up with the same product?.............I guess you could talk about distilling the minerals and salts from spring water (a la nat u ral) and still having water, anybody ever tasted of distilled water, yuck. Same for tasting  box store yellow honey, yuck!

well enough of my ramblings.

[iddee]

The biggest reason for removing the pollen is to prevent knowing where it came from. China illegally imports honey into the USA and they could identify it as coming from China if the pollen was left in it. Pollen is the way they source honey. Companies that remove all the pollen do so to keep from being caught selling illegal honey.

[Bakersdozen]

The January 2014 issue of American Bee Journal, page 15 contains an article entitled "Make Sure You Don't Buy Illegal Honey From China".  The article suggests checking the web site www.TrueSourceHoney.com to verify the source of honey purchased in a supermarket or other retail outlet.  The potential buyer enters the UPC code on the label to verify the honey was ethically and legally sourced.  Honey producers can apply to be added to True Source's list.  It appears that a honey label is verified, via inspector, before being added to their list of reputable dealers.  The inspectors test product and production information to verify they have the capability of producing the amount of honey that they are marketing.  Their goal is to maintain a high reputation of honey as a high quality food and help sustain the U.S. honey sector.

[BoilerJim]

Thank you, Bakersdozen, for giving us two links to look at, study, and I am actually thinking about cutting and pasting parts into my own advertising of my own honey.