Almost half of the honey on sale in Europe is fake, beekeeping associations warn

Almost half of the honey circulating on the European market may not be real honey. The European Beekeeping Association (EBA) and national federations, including the Portuguese one, warn that falsification has reached a scale that threatens the economic survival of beekeeping and distorts competition across European agriculture.

How honey is faked

According to the EBA, the fraud consists mainly of replacing part or all of the honey with plant-based syrups — such as rice or corn — produced with advanced technology designed precisely to evade the most commonly used laboratory tests. These “honeys” reach retail shelves at prices up to around 75% lower than what is paid to European producers, making it impossible to compete on fair terms.

From the consumer’s point of view, the immediate health risk is considered low, but there is a direct deception: instead of a complex natural food, rich in compounds produced by bees, many people end up buying essentially cheap sugar disguised as honey.

New European rules to try to curb the problem

Following these complaints, Slovenia submitted a proposal to revise the so-called “Honey Directive”, which has already been approved by European institutions. The new rules will require clear indication on the label of the country or countries of origin of all honey sold in the European Union — something that some States, such as Portugal, Spain and France, had already implemented, but which will now become an EU-wide standard.

Brussels has also set the goal of creating a harmonised method for verifying honey authenticity and a network of reference laboratories. The target deadline is three years, a period that beekeeping associations consider far too long given the speed at which the market is being flooded with adulterated product.

Impact on European beekeeping

Sector organisations warn that this unfair competition is pushing many beekeepers into income collapse and out of business. Production costs in Europe cannot keep up with the artificially low prices of honeys mixed with syrups imported from third countries, often with weaker controls.

The loss of colonies and beekeepers is not just an economic problem. Fewer bees also means less pollination and greater vulnerability of agricultural crops that depend on these insects, with knock-on effects for European food security.

What the associations are calling for

• Much tighter control of honey imports, with laboratory analyses capable of detecting sophisticated adulteration.

• Traceability systems that make it possible to follow the product from producer to shelf, in order to identify and remove fraudulent batches from the market.

• Effective enforcement of the new labelling rules, so that the origin of honey is no longer opaque and misleading.

At the same time, the EBA and national federations urge consumers to prioritise honey produced in Europe, ideally bought directly from local beekeepers or from brands with proven transparency regarding the origin and composition of their products.