The nectar that bees bring back to the hives contains sugars and high protein pollen and is essential for the survival of the bee colony. A healthy hive will produce a lot of honey and being too greedy as a beekeeper does not benefit your little workers at all. To avoid having to provide additional 'feed' to the bees we encourage beekeepers not to take all honey out of the hives and feed wastage back to the bees. We ask our selected beekeepers to avoid adding refined sugars.

Sugars produced from tropical plants like sugar cane and maize or corn are produced using a photosynthetic pathway referred to as the C4 pathway. Nectar which is collected by bees comes from plants that use a different process of photosynthesis, referred to as the C3 pathway. This way we can identify adulteration in honey through a simple laboratory test that we perform on all our products.

Beekeeper checking for adulteration in honey C4 sugars