The Bee Bank Honey Club Program

The Bee Bank only sells authentic, real domestic honey sourced directly from our Beekeepers! 

Why it matters

The USA only produces 16% of the total honey consumed. In contrast, there is a dramatic difference in health benefits with honey compared to fake honey made from rice and cane sugars and food coloring. Unfortunately, most of the honey sold in grocery stores is adulterated – Fake honey. 

Fake Honey Facts

Food fraud, not just honey, is regrettably commonplace.  The fake Italian virgin olive oil scandal is a good example. There is a sinister aspect to the honey fraud because other forms of food fraud do not threaten the backbone of America’s food supply chain. 

If beekeepers can't survive competing against cheap fake honey, beekeepers will eventually go out of business. Commercial beekeepers are already in decline at an alarming rate.

Honey fraud drives down honey prices, which in turn drives beekeepers out of business.
The loss of our pollinators has a ripple effect through our entire food chain. 

The honey testing varied dramatically by origin:

  • China: 74% suspicious — 66 of 89 samples

  • Turkey: 93% — 14 of 15

  • UK re-exports: 100% — 10 of 10

  • Overall imported honey tested: 46%

In some regions, adulterated honey was as low as 4-5%. Imported adulterated with shifting different origins of sugar are often undetected. 

Known Facts about the extent of honey fraud in the USA.

  • Domestically, the USA only produces 18% of the honey consumed in the USA, and most of the real domestic honey is blended with fake honey by the national bottlers.

  • Virtually 80 % of the honey sold by the national bottlers to grocery chains are blends of domestic and imported - often fake honey.

  •  In some cases, the fake honey is nothing more than rice syrup or beet syrup or other cheap syrups, coloring, and flavoring, masquerading as real honey.

The American people, unknowingly, often are not getting the benefit of real honey.  In some cases, such as refined cane sugars blended with authentic can be harmful, particularly for diabetics.

The Bee Banks initiative, making available only domestic honey directly from the beekeeper, offers its subscription members the benefit of knowing you are getting authentic honey.  We sell only authentic certified lab-tested honey because our tests focus on bee DNA-proteins rather than sugars.

The Bee Bank Honey Club is one of the few avenues to reliably obtain authentic honey.

Look for the Certification stamps to be sure you are getting authentic honey.