Rare Bee Products - Wild Honey

I'm not sure what you would consider as rare bee products, but some honey retailers are pointing to honey from the wild, as in honey extracted from wild honeycombs produced by honeybees in the wild forest, as opposed to most regular honey farmed by beekeepers in man-made hives. A quick scan through of the information found on the packaging of two such rare bee products helps to put together a summary of their retail claims:

Wild Honey Versus Beekeeper's Honey:

1. The potency or health benefits of wild honey are seven times more than honey from cultivated bees. (Price tag of wild honey is several times bigger too!)
2. Wild honey is not as sweet and has a natural sour taste as well.
3. When mixed with water, wild honey is transparent and clear, whereas regular honey turns cloudy.
4. Wild honey doesn't freeze when refrigerated.
5. When mixed with wild honey, egg yolk would appear to become half-cooked. (This strikes a similarity with the common folk belief for testing pure honey.)

If you have an opinion or any thoughts on wild honey, I would be eager to hear from you. Need to make this crystal clear, I'm not trying to put beekeepers out of business (doesn't benefit me in anyway) and I'm not selling wild honey. My curiosity about where exactly these wild honeycombs are obtained from and how true the claims about wild honey are just wouldn't let me go. Such rare honey must be difficult to collect!

My Thoughts on Wild Honey
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Innovative Bee Products - Pure Honey Drops

I am amazed by how the innovativeness of honey suppliers has influenced the presentation of bee products these days. First came honey packed and sealed in tiny plastic containers (5ml), then honey sticks, honey powder for baking, and even honey bottled in exclusive fanciful bottles. And to compete directly with the all too familiar sugar cubes, there are now honey cubes that are marketed as "honey that you can hold", "the world's first 100% pure, non messy honey cube for tea and coffee drinkers."

Out of plain curiosity, I got hold of some of these honey drops to try and would like to share my experience with you.

My first impression of the product? Neat and mess-free. Exuding an expensive and premium taste, the golden, honeycomb-shape drop does have a lot of novelty appeal. My "out of box" experience with the product was not 100% positive though. It wasn't totally easy to remove from the little plastic package as the base of the honey drop got stuck to the plastic I had to flick it out with my fingers. Perhaps, the weather here is so warm that the honey has turned a little sticky? I prepared a cup of warm English Camomile tea, and added the honey drop. While stirring to dissolve it, it got stuck to the base of the cup and the spoon. But within a minute, all was dissolved.

What first piqued my attention was its claim of "the world's first 100% pure honey drop" since most honey candies contain additives such as sweeteners and starch-like substances for turning the honey into hard solid forms. I know manufacturers will never reveal the process or technology behind this, but a question did pop up and bother me, would processing and drying honey into solid form in any way affect the health properties of honey?

And the price? A box of 20 units cost about 10 US dollars. This means each unit of 5g (equivalent to 0.2 teaspoon of honey) costs about US$0.50. This is quite a substantial amount for a cup of tea or coffee enjoyed at home. I believe many people would switch from using table sugar to honey for health reasons, but how many would switch from using liquid or cream honey to honey drop for the benefit of convenience (less messy)? Special honey varieties (e.g. UMF Manuka) do command high prices, but for regular honey, besides the up-scale market like the restaurants and hotels industry, I wonder how many regular home honey end-users would fork out a lot more for honey drops?

End of 'Rare Bee Products - Wild Honey". Go to "How to Test for Pure Honey".