[skylurk]

Honey supply chains are opaque and global, plus the incentives to cheat are clearly there and it's hard to definitively prove a batch was not adulterated. I'd say it's fair to be suspicious.

That said, this old article seems to think its not as common a problem as you would expect: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/11/25/142659547/re...

[throwup238]

> "Consumers don't tend to like crystallized honey," says Jill Clark, vice president for sales and marketing at Dutch Gold. "It's very funny. In Canada, there's a lot of creamed honey sold, and people are very accustomed to honey crystallizing. Same in Europe. But the U.S. consumer is very used to a liquid product, and as soon as they see those first granules of crystallization, we get the phone calls: 'Something's wrong with my honey!'"

Anecdotal but everything in that NPR article rings true to me. American consumers are used to the bear shaped bottles with purified honey that’s barely distinguishable from sugar syrup and could easily be adulterated but the raw honey I usually buy is so obviously honey from the taste and texture that I have a hard time believing any of it is adulterated. If honey producers were really that good at artificially replicating flavor profiles, they’d be far ahead of the rest of the food science industry.

[highcountess]

Are you sure what you believe is unadulterated honey because you are familiar with the taste, is not just adulterated and you are just so accustomed to fake honey that you confuse the two?

I say that because basically all the honey I’ve ever bought in a store has always tasted flat and lacked flavor depth that has long made me wonder about its authority compared to known hive honey.

[throwup238]

I’ve had raw honey straight from both domesticated and wild hives as it was collected so unless the bees themselves are adulterating it, I think I’ve got an accurate baseline for how honey is supposed to taste.

Go out and buy a good manuka or wild Himalayan honey and you’ll quickly learn how to spot the real stuff. The honey I buy isn’t meant to look like filtered golden sugar syrup so adulterating it is practically impossible. That said I buy it from ethnic grocery stores so unless you’re getting the good stuff at Trader Joes YMMV (I like their manuka)

[michaelbuckbee]

I remember an episode of Dirty Jobs where there was an old candy plant or something that bees had gotten into, and they made blue honey from the syrup that was left over in the plant.

Rare, but possibly the bees were doing a swindle.

[throwup238]

From my limited understanding almost all beekeepers give their bees sugar syrup to help them overwinter anyway so nothing stops them from supplementing their diets in the spring. It’s obviously not ideal since a lot of the other aromatics from pollen will be missing but it’s still a step up from mixing the end product with sugar syrup.

Blue honey sounds cool though.

[afandian]

Thicker 'fondant' is for winter. Thinner syrup is for spring before the nectar flow gets going. Typically over winter the colony reduces in size, and the hive is reduced down to a single "brood box".

Supers (extra boxes) are placed on the hive when the colony is producing enough honey to harvest.

In theory the supplemental sugar shouldn't get into the supers.

[nuodag]

My Grandpa is a beekeeper, i help him take care of his hives. The honey i get out of that crystallises quickly to a relatively rough texture, and has a deep taste. It is a completely different thing than what you get in the store.

I don’t know if that one is adulterated, or just processed so much that it is all flat and smooth.

[pfannkuchen]

I’m so confused by people not liking crystallized honey. It’s so much more convenient to use, it doesn’t drip anywhere it’s practically like thick peanut butter consistency. Great for yogurt, toast or tea. Why would anyone want it to be runny?

[yumraj]

We buy from Costco and most/all of it crystallizes after some time.

Not sure if that makes it good honey, but there’s that.

[acomjean]

You can heat it in a microwave to reverse the crystallization.

Do not do this ifs the honey is in a squeezable bear container. The honey will boil, make a hole in the bear and spray honey all over the inside of your microwave (the turntable helps this). This will make a huge mess and will make opening the microwave more challenging.

[yumraj]

I think the general recommendation is to put the bottle in warm/hot water. I don’t believe microwaving is a good idea, unless done at low power for longer.

[avidiax]

Sous-vide at 110F. It will take hours, but it won't affect the flavor.

[dredmorbius]

Warm water is sufficient, though with recent cautions about heating plastics and leaching of chemicals, I'd prefer transferring the honey to a glass jar if it's not packaged in such already.

You can double-boil if you want, where the jar sits in a shallow water bath which you boil for 10--20 minutes or so to decrystalise the honey.

[7thpower]

The first thing that popped into my head after reading this was the large container of Kirkland honey I have.

I thought: “Costco wouldn’t lie to me? Would they?”

Now I must go and find out.

[hollerith]

Just because they're not lying doesn't mean they've done the work of finding out whether the honey is pure.

[scheme271]

Costco apparently sells one of the few olive oils that aren't adulterated. So their honey might also be real.

[dghlsakjg]

Crystallization isn’t an indicator of fake or low quality honey.

We have had wildflower honey crystallize in the honeycomb when we left it in the garage over winter.

It can be decrystallized easily with gentle heat. I put our jars in a water bath in a pot and leave it over a low setting for about an hour until it is good. The water never gets over 125 or so, which should be fine.

[yumraj]

I had meant the other way, that it crystallizes so if it means that it’s a good honey.

[dghlsakjg]

There are a number of things that can affect crystallization; Storage conditions, filtering, what the bees foraged, etc.

There are some genuine honeys which rarely crystalize.

Afaik (as an amateur beekeeper), it is not a good indicator of anything in particular, there are even reports of adulterated honey crystallizing. This make sense, since honey and fake honey are both a supersaturated solution of sugars that will gladly crystalize if given an opportunity.