Authenticity of Honey and Other Bee Products

Honey authenticity is defined by the Codex Alimentarius standard, the EU Honey Directive and several national legislations. The Codex and EU standards were recently revised. The authenticity of honey and other bee products have two aspects. Authenticity in respect of production i.e. to prevent adulteration by addition of other food ingredients by correct beekeeping practice and processing. The other aspect concerns authenticity in respect of geographical and botanical origin. As honeys from certain geographical regions or botanical sources attain higher prices than others, mislabelling is of economic interest. Today, the authenticity of the botanical origin of bee products is determined by sensory analysis, pollen analysis and several physico-chemical methods while for testing of the geographical authenticity melissopalynological methods are employed. These analyses, however are time-consuming and require specialized know-how and expertise. Objective evaluation techniques based on analytical chemistry and statistics should be developed for reliable authenticity testing in order to ensure the quality of the bee products as valuable natural products. The objective of this presentation is to discuss the different authenticity issues, the current methods used and to evaluate new methods for successful authenticity testing.