Argentine Beekeepers' Magazine

(Espacio Apícola, November 7th, 2024) Several samples of Chinese products, offered as Chinese honey or Vietnamese honey, were taken at the recent SIAL Paris fair by Estonian beekeepers and analysed by Metagenomics DNA Analisis where they proved to be absolutely fake.

Peeter Matson, Sander Sulane and Taavi Tull, professional beekeepers from Estonia recorded an investigation they carried out at the recent SIAL Paris fair, entitled "The truth behind honey in the global market". They travelled to Paris, visited the stands of Chinese companies offering "honey" and on their return took the product samples to the CELVIA laboratory in Estonia, where they were subjected to the most innovative analysis of authenticity developed there by Kairi Raime, the Metagenomic DNA Analysis (MDA) in honey which we have already referred here.

The conversations with the Chinese sellers, recorded by the beekeepers who have become investigative journalists by chance, confirm the main suspicions that weigh on Chinese products sold as honey around the world. In the photo that illustrates this note, from our archive, you can see similar products offered at the ANUGA fair (Cologne, Germany, 2017) with labels that say everything that a scammer dedicated to bottling "honey" wants: A cheap product, which can be sold as if it were honey, clear and translucent, which does not crystallize and which has the flavor you want.

The other suspicion confirmed in this conversation is that the sellers of this product can export it to you from China or from Vietnam, where they say that the company has another factory of the same product... which is nothing more than a triangulation like the one opportunely reported in India by "Down to Earth" and which we opportunely share in Espacio Apícola 131 for Spanish readers.

Now, the sellers interviewed by Peeter, Sander and Taavi offer products with or without certifications. For the United Kingdom, where there are no controls on authenticity, they offer a cheaper product. But if you need certifications with analysis that enable the product to be sold in the European Union, the product is more expensive and Chinese sellers suggest analyzing the samples with the INTERTEK laboratory and secondly, but also with QSI or Eurofins, as they claim in the video, and they guarantee that these products perfectly emulate honey from bees in carbon-13 isotope differential tests, high-resolution mass spectrometry or Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (EA/LC-IRMS; HRMS or NMR respectively).

As we said, prices vary according to the market. Now, since there are tariffs to import this product that they sell as honey in some markets, the same Chinese companies offer to sell the product from Vietnam.

Watch and listen by yourself the conversation in English between beekeepers and Chinese sellers and the final result of this chapter within the movement towards "Clean up the Honey Market" proposed by the European Professional Beekeepers Association EPBA on YouTube (15-minute video).

Fernando Esteban