FAKE Honey Scams EXPOSED - Talking HONEY Fraud With Bernard Heuvel

I am here with Bernard Hoijboel, the man best known for fighting honey fraud across the world. Welcome, Bernard. Thank you so much. So honey fraud is a big problem. Tell me about it.

It is a priority number one problem for the beekeeping sector in all over the world.

Yeah.

I've been traveling to South America, to everywhere in the world, and all the professional beekeepers and beekeepers are having trouble with the flood of fake honey.

So it's a big mess. Impacted you personally? What made you start to fight this honey fraud?

Yes, I have been a professional beekeeper in Germany. I had around 500 colonies, was a honey producer, and the turning point came in 2021 when there was a big flood of fake honey into the European market, and it washed away a lot of my colleagues, and also I was going down with the business, and this started a long journey and a big fight against the fake honey industry.

I have a huge amount of respect for you, yeah, because There's certain things that I might like to change about the industry or do differently, and I shy away from it because it's, it's a big challenge to do some of these things, particularly honey fraud. But you have taken it like the bull by the horns and you are running with it. So go on, tell us what you've done so far.

Yes. First of all, I'm the president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association, and I took up this responsibility and I have nothing to lose anymore. Yeah. And so I said, it's a fight David against Goliath. And then, yeah, I'm David now. Pick up a stone and we need to win.

We do.

Yeah. But I also got a lot of motivation by other beekeepers. And I want to save a lot of beekeeper families that make a living off beekeeping, that are producing honey. I want to save all the honeybees in the world. Because when there's fake honey on the market and beekeepers cannot sell their honey anymore, there's no income. No income means they do another job, quitting beekeeping. And if there's no beekeeping, there are no bees and so on. So there's a lot of consequences there. I started it and from there it went on a wild journey until now.

How do we fix it?

I think we have to be crystal clear that there's fake honey on the market. That we have to do much more testing, laboratory testing, and also auditing, and also the backtracing of where the honey comes from.

Mm-hmm.

Because this is a crime. We are not talking about something like, oh, it's not so, not so bad. It is a crime. It's the consumer gets betrayed, also the beekeepers get betrayed, and it's a criminal business right now. And this has to be shut down, especially by the governments. We are also talking about our governments doing the same. They are, on the one hand, they are supporting the beekeepers, but on the other hand, they are doing nothing against those crimes. Yeah. And this has to be stopped. And yeah, investigation standards have to be set. There's a lot of work to do. We have to message that there's a crime going on and has to be stopped.

What I really don't like, and I think this is maybe like there's big steps that are needed to fix it, but there's some like little mini baby steps that we could take as well. And I think one of the baby steps should be, what do we call honey? Because I think if we've got real beekeepers' honey, we say, right, this is called honey.

Yeah.

And then the stuff that's in the supermarket that quite clearly isn't honey, I think it needs to be called something else. It needs to be called honey syrup or honey substitute.

I would say the word honey.

Yeah, I think it needs to just be honey is from the bees. That's it. Yeah, it's misleading, isn't it? And I think that would be a small step.

We also have like the vegan honey on the market. It's the same problem. And it's not honey. And it has to not— the word honey has not to be near to this.

So that's probably the answer there, isn't it? Is that honey has to come 100% from the bees.

100% from the bees.

100% from the bees.

And that would be a really good— No fiddling around with it. So you don't dry it, you don't filter it, and nothing else like this.

The realisation that I came to though was this. If someone's going to go into Lidl or Aldi or Netto and buy the €1 jar of honey. Yeah. There is no way that I can sell them a €10 jar of honey because they're not our target market. If you're a customer going in and buying a €1 jar of honey, yeah, you're probably not going to be the person to pay €10.

No. And we don't need them.

And we don't need them. And this is the thing, and this is where I think both companies, kind of both sides can exist. So if you called it €1 sugar syrup for people who don't want to spend €10 on honey.

Exactly.

they'd still buy it, wouldn't they? They'd be like, yeah, no, I want the €1 one.

But don't call it honey.

But don't call it honey. And that's a small, really easy step. And I think everybody can win there, can't they? Nobody really loses too much.

Yeah, not too much. But the beekeepers and the bees will win. And we have the right word for the right product. So honey is honey. And this would be a big step. Yep. But we maybe lose those customers who pay the €1. But I also say, we were testing all over Europe, but also in the UK, for honeys out of the supermarket. And we came out with, in Germany, 80% were adulterated.

Wow.

Of all the honeys that are in the supermarket.

Wow.

We came close to 100% in the USA.

I see that. 94%, I think, was the figure, wasn't it?

Yes, but it's also like in Switzerland was 60%, and Austria was also more than 90%. Because as a customer, you can go out and see if there's a name of a beekeeper on it, there's an address, something, something you can really backtrack. Then you can be more sure that it's real honey. And also, it doesn't matter if it's a cheap honey or expensive honey. We had the fair trade honeys, we had the organic honeys with high price, and they were also adulterated. Because for those people in the fake industry, it's more interesting to fake a high-priced honey than the really cheap honeys. There's more margin in it.

Yeah, and it's a strange one. Before I make my next point, I just want to say thank you to Apicoz. who let us have this amazing little seating area to do our, to do our thing. So thank you, Apicoz. Really, really cool machinery over here. One of the things in the UK that could be another one of these baby steps, and there's a landmark ruling that took place in the UK last year about this. I've always been a huge fan of the word raw, raw honey, because I find in America and in the UK as well, the consumers, the consumers don't necessarily know what it means. There's no set of defined standards. But they understand the concept, which is raw honey is untampered directly from the beehive. And I've been really pushing. I like that name.

I don't know. I'm not so sure. Oh, here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a discussion here going on because honey is honey and there's no nothing else.

There is.

Because when you call it different names, that is my problem. You have maybe more confusion. Honey is honey. It's coming from the bees. So when honey is always raw.

So, so when we go back, when we— the person who's got the €1 honey or the €10 honey, they say, well, honey is honey. I'm going to go with the €1 one because it's €9 cheaper.

But it's not honey.

But I like to say to them, well, call that one what you want. Yeah, €1. My honey is raw honey directly from the beehive. It's got my name on it. You can see where it comes from.

I understand the intention. Yeah, but I see, I see like I see it like this. This €1 honey is no honey. It has not been called honey. And there's no difference. Oh, there's a big difference. This one is the syrup, and the other one is honey.

You make a very, very valid point. So at the moment, we've got the €1 honey and the €10 raw honey, where really we've got the €1 tub of sugar syrup and honey. And that is simpler. That should be easier to understand. So you are right.

I will concede. Yeah, I'm trying to push this. Yeah.

The other challenge that I think, though, and this is where we catch ourselves out as beekeepers, Yeah. So I think if they tested my honey from my bees, possibly fail the adulteration test because you never know, you might get a tiny little bit of sugar.

No, that is not a problem. When we're talking about faking, the faked honey, adulterated honey, we're talking about 30, 40, up to 90% syrup and 10%. Okay. So it's not like the 1, 2, 3% or 5% that may come from the winter feeding. And also, this is a task that we as beekeepers can do as homework. We can learn how to keep bees without contaminating just a little bit. This is not a problem that we are talking about. We're talking about massive alteration. That means like in a high percentage. And we usually— I've been in China and I've been doing like an investigative research there. We were pretending to be honey traders.

I've seen this. This is brilliant. This is brilliant.

It was crazy stuff. And we visited the sites where they're producing the fake honey and also the syrup that can pass the NMR and different laboratory tests. And we saw how they do it. So it's crystal clear, it's like a fake honey industry and they're producing thousands and thousands of tons of this stuff that is not honey and it's adulterating. And we are not talking about 1 or 2% of winter feeding in the honey. That is nothing that we have to worry about. And those tests are not endangering the beekeepers who is Okay, producing good honey. It's just the laboratory tests will, especially the DNA tests, they will find adulterated honey in the industrial products that are traded around the world.

It's scary. I've seen this. What is it? There's like a name for the documentary. What's it called?

It's yeah, Die Süße Versuchung. How do you say it? Die Süße Versuchung. It's in German, but we have an English translation now on YouTube.

On YouTube.

I sent you the link and maybe you can link it in this. No, it's Wilson.

It will be there. I will find it and we'll put it there. And people should go and watch it because it is very interesting. And what you see is open fraud. People saying to you, I can make you lots of money by you buying this product that you mix in, put a little bit of honey in, and then you can sell it as honey even though it's 95% not honey. And they're just openly advertising that, aren't they? So the honey— we're at Apimondia and the honey judging show didn't take place this year, did it? Because of Adulteration.

Exactly.

I'm not, I'm not a fan of that. I would have liked to see it go ahead even with that in place. But what, what I really, really don't like to see is in Apimondia, there's probably still fake honey here, right?

Yeah, that is probably the case. And we have to fix this quickly. We do. It's quite urgent. And I think, yeah, of course, because we're running out of time, all the professional beekeepers don't, don't have any income anymore for years right now. And if they close down the doors, all the equipment will go away, all the innovation will go away, all the breeding of the bee queens will go away. There's quite some consequences when the professional beekeepers go out of business, and this will have long-lasting consequences. And I hope we can fix it before this happens.

So yeah, I do as well. An interesting observation is, I would say, the number in the UK, the number of professional beekeepers over the last 15 years has done this. gone down, number of overall colonies managed gone down. The number of amateur beekeepers has gone up and up and up and huge, like really, really taking off and shows no sign of stopping, which means beekeepers can sell them queens, they can sell them nucs, they can sell them equipment. So you're getting this expansion of other areas. And then those beekeepers have the best guarantee that the honey that they're going to consume is real because they're taking it out of a beehive themselves.

Themselves, yeah.

So that's not good for big commercial bee farmers, but that's maybe where we're trending towards, you think?

We're trending into it. But if you talk to the equipment producers, they say that all their turnover is going down by 50%.

Overall volume, I think. Yeah, I think you're right. Probably.

Yeah. Yeah. Because like in Germany, we are only a handful, a handful of professional beekeepers in Germany. Yeah, but we keep more than half of the bee colonies.

Yeah, so if you've got someone got 10,000 colonies and they go bust, that's 10,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this will have an effect on the industry, on innovation, and also on the pollination. Like, if you're speaking of pollination all over the country, yeah, it will be cut by half when the professionals will go out of business.

Yeah, but I think—

And also the knowledge. We have a lot of knowledge because we are professionally working it.

Yeah.

And this will also disappear and will never come back again.

No. And that's the thing, once it's gone, it's gone. But I'm a real strong believer of evolution taking place. So when something bad like honey fraud happens, potentially something good can come out of it. So you'll see diversification into other fields, into queens, into nucs. But then the diversification that I can see more and more now is ultra specialisation of honey. So it's not just, here is my honey.

Mm-hmm.

It's right here is this very particular honey from this very particular tree at this time of the season, and I'm going to justify the additional cost because I'm adding extra value in. So I like that. That's good. That's progress.

And also, yeah, there's some progress, of course, but, um, yeah, we'll see. And also, I still— I see that the honey will be more valued as medicine, for example. Yeah, because, um, I can give you a picture of— this was like a very serious wound. Okay. With, um, with a bacteria infecting it. Right down to the bones.

Oh wow.

And everything, and I just healed it with honey.

No way.

Yes. Wow.

Any particular type of honey?

You know, just my own honey.

Your own honey.

Well, it's amazing. If you experience it yourself, you know what honey can do. And honey is not just sugar.

Yeah.

That's for sure. There are properties in there like the enzymes and something that makes it much more digestible and much more valuable for the, for the body. The people are not buying sugar but honey for a reason. Yeah, because it's more or less a medicine and it has to be valued like this. And I started like also like this as a hobbyist and then went more and more going crazy on beekeeping. Yeah, like you can easily can do if you catch the virus. Well, the bee virus.

Indeed, indeed. But so what's next then? What's like, you went out there, you did this investigative journalism. What's next? Like, are we going to stop honey fraud? And if we are, how are we going to do it?

Oh, we have as an EPBA, as a European Professional Beekeeping Association, we have 3 3-level strategy. We have a short-term, a midterm, and a long-term strategy because we have to work on all the scopes. And the short-term is to inform the consumers. We have these publications in the TV, we have the publication magazines and everything, so the people out there can do an informed decision, we call it, so they can decide against the fake honey. By buying the real honey.

And they do.

In Germany, the sales for the professional beekeepers that sell in jars went up 50%.

Nice.

And, um, the retailers were complaining against me, or for me, that, oh, their sales are going down. So the fake honey industry is drained out of the money. And that is a good one. The next thing is that the retailers like Lidl, Aldi, everybody, you name them, uh, they have to decide to do more quality control. and maybe like implement the DNA method for testing the honey.

Yeah.

And if they decide to do it, they can do it right now. And then something— a lot will be over overnight. So that will be a short-term solution. We also now working on lawsuits, so this would be the midterm solution or the midterm scope.

Yeah.

So it's a crime and it can be called a crime and it can be treated as a crime. So then it make of law cases file them. And this is the midterm. And the long term is working with the authorities, with laws, standards, and everything. But it's a long, long, long, long work for years. Let me say 10 to 20 years maybe. We cannot wait so long, but we have to start now these processes so it doesn't delay too much into the future. So we have the 3— you call it scopes in English? I don't know.

Yeah, 3 scopes.

3 scopes, short term, midterm, and long term. We work on all of the three scopes, and the first we started is the retailers and the consumers that we work on. So we are now starting to fund the money for the lawsuits, and when we got the money, we yeah, we sue the retailers because they are selling.

So it's the retailers that will be sued.

They are responsible in the end. They are responsible for what they sell.

Accountability is a huge part of it, isn't it?

Accountability lies by by the retailers. So they are to be sealed.

Wow, okay.

And when this happens, this also will have like a lot of media attention, of course. And then, yeah, maybe this helps also to convince the retailers to do more. Yeah, because right now they say, oh, the standard lab tests say it's honey, so we are satisfied. Yeah, but it's not enough. We are telling them, and we know not just by laboratory tests but just also by this investigative research that we do, we have it all on audio and video. What can you do more?

Yeah, it's there. It's there.

It's not— you cannot just— no more discussion on this. It's there. It happens big scale, honey fraud everywhere, and retailers are in charge to act now. And they cannot, like, ignore that they are selling the fraud stuff, that they're doing the crime. And if they continue, we sue them. That's it. Okay. In the long term, all the authorities, governments— I'm not such a fan myself, I like to be like self-responsible, and you have to do something and not waiting for some government or someone else do it. But the government and the law and the EU Commission and everybody else, they have also their work to do and put standards on what is honey, what can be called honey, and also how we test it, how do we investigate in fraud, which may also include financial investigation. Yes. Where's the money going, coming from? Where's this fake honey going and coming from? Tracking all the industry or in there, all the waste that comes into. So yeah, there's a lot of work and we have to squeeze, squeeze scale strategy. Yeah.

Well, you're doing a fantastic job. I've got huge, huge respect for what you do. For anybody watching this, probably going to be beekeepers mostly. What's your call to action? Like, how can they help?

Oh, that's pretty easy. First of all, we have a website. It's from the Professional Beekeepers of Europe. The short version is ProBees, ProBees, like professional, pro bees.

See at the bottom of the screen.

Yeah, .eu.

Okay.

And what you can do as a beekeeper are 2 things. First of all, there are flyers that you can download and print. But when you sell honey, you can put the flyers there, or maybe also have like a large-scale stand-up thing. You can put— when you're out selling honey on the market or at your home, you can put out the flyer for information for the consumers.

Nice.

And there will be discussions with the consumers, and also this discussion will go onward into the families of the consumers. And so this is what we need. We need the short-term information of all the consumers that are out there, and the beekeepers can help us by spreading the word.

Yes.

And also the second option is we have the support of membership there. So when you want to support our fight against the fake honey, not only at European level but on the world level, because we are connected with all the global associations, then you can also become a supportive member there. And then, yeah, we pick it up. And the next thing that we have to finance is lawsuits against the retailers, which will also make some waves, I hope. Cool.

Well, I want to do whatever I can to help. Yeah, anything I can do video-wise, just let me know. I'd like to come to Germany because I am, I am half German, if anybody doesn't know. But I'd like to come to Germany and we can chat and look around. But Bernard, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you.

We give a final shout out to Apikoz, who gave us this wonderful place to sit. And this is actually genuine honey from Poland. So don't let me think that this was the €1 one. This is really good honey from Apikoz. So final thank you to Bernard. Definitely get over there, check the website out, join the fight against honey fraud.