Fake Honey

The world is literally being flooded with fake honey. What is fake honey?  “Honey fraud can take different forms. For instance, by selling cheaper multifloral honey as single source honey at a higher selling point; by adding sugar syrups to increase the volume, or by harvesting it ahead of time and then drying it artificially in large “honey factories”, to cut time and costs”.  Honey factories?  With world bee hive populations declining, how then does one account for an increase in exports from countries with conceivably not enough production capacity?  China has been highlighted in this article, suffering as with all countries in a notable decline in honey bee populations, a situation incongruent with large export volumes.  Is it possible that these honey factories export to countries who on-sell outward with enough margin to justify the business?  Countries whose “honey exports increase dramatically in parallel with their imports from China” – countries such as Spain, Slovakia, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Lithuania, Italy, Ireland, Germany and Belgium.  As South Africans we are importing large amounts of honey, do we know where our honey is coming from?  Is it from a honey factory?  How fake is our honey market?  Read more in this Catch the Buzz article.