Honey is the primary sweet condiment consumed by humans. It represents one of the oldest food products on Earth, as bees appeared 80 million years ago. However, behind its sweet and golden appearance lies a complex world where regulatory compliance, safety, and quality play a crucial role. To ensure you have access to reliable and healthy products, we commit to analyzing all our honeys multiple times, allowing you to consume this hive gold with peace of mind.
1. Why analyze honey in a laboratory?
We might tend to think that a natural product like honey doesn't need strict controls since everything comes from nature. In reality, with the market facing numerous frauds, it is essential for companies to adhere to many standards to avoid misleading consumers.
Concretely, what are the objectives of laboratory analyses?
Verify regulatory compliance: To circulate freely, food products must comply with certain standards, particularly the requirements of the Codex Alimentarius, an organization that sets global food product standards. Its objective is to harmonize quality criteria to facilitate international trade.
Guarantee authenticity and purity: Heavily confronted with food fraud, honey analyses help protect responsible and reliable producers from a dubious market. Many add sugar or mix honeys to lower their costs.
Protect consumer health: The reference characteristics for each honey communicated by international and European institutions not only protect producers against fraud but also consumers from antibiotics, heavy metals, or any other substance that could endanger their health.
Preserve brand image: In a world where brands must be responsible and committed to reliable and sustainable practices, laboratory analyses highlight brand transparency and their desire to provide the best for their customers. This also obliges them to respect the law to avoid catastrophic media backlash.
2. Different types of analyses performed
The analyses required to determine the correct appellation of a honey and its purity are numerous and can be carried out in an external laboratory. However, to 100% control all stages of our activity, we have our own laboratory located at our production site in Dijon.
Physico-chemical analyses
These initial analyses provide us with the essential characteristics of honey:
Moisture content: Céline, our laboratory manager, analyzes the moisture content in honey using a refractometer. This must not exceed 20% to avoid alcoholic fermentation, so this rate is also linked to the acidity level, which must not exceed a certain threshold.
pH and acidity: These characteristics allow different honeys to be distinguished. For example, the pH of acacia honey will be around 4, while that of chestnut honey will be 5 or even 6. An abnormally low pH could raise questions about a potential mixture with a more acidic honey, for instance. These analyses also highlight the freshness of honeys.
Electrical conductivity: This characteristic is very important as it allows nectar honey to be differentiated from honeydew honeys. The latter are produced from the secretions of insects such as aphids that feed on plant sap. So it's not the flowers that are foraged here, but the secretions. These honeys are generally more woody, darker, and less sweet.
HMF: HMF, full name Hydroxymethylfurfural, is a molecule present in honey that increases when sugars undergo dehydration caused notably by heat. A low level reflects a fresh and well-preserved honey, while a high level can reflect old or overheated honey.
Sugar concentration: Honeys are mainly composed of two types of sugars: glucose and fructose. Analyzing their concentration ensures that no other sugar has been added. It also helps identify different types of honeys based on the glucose/fructose ratio.
Pollen analyses
To complete the analyses and precisely define the origin of the honey, researchers must focus on pollen analysis. Indeed, for each sample, this involves counting the pollen and determining its origin, which will help conclude the honey's harvesting location.
Did you know that, in total, we count approximately 300 pollens in a single sample and identify about forty varieties of them in each honey?
Organoleptic analyses
To conclude on a honey's appellation, we naturally have to rely on our senses. Our laboratory manager, Céline, will be tasked with smelling, tasting, and analyzing the color of all our honeys. For this final step, she uses, for example, the Pfund scale to compare the hue with those provided by the reference.
3. The importance of traceability
Laboratory tests are not limited to legal compliance; they go much further.
Botanical and geographical origin: Analyses precisely determine the foraged plants and their geographical location. This allows us to trace the history of the honey and highlight all the work done from hive to jar.
Production history: The reports transmitted by our laboratory allow us to know the processing of honeys in production and to react actively if we detect an anomaly.
Traceability is one of our biggest priorities; we do everything possible to answer our customers' questions as accurately as possible.
This is also what the lot number on all our jars is for. Thanks to it, we can find all the following information:
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The origin of the honey
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The floral variety
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Associated quality control results
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The harvest period
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The packaging date
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The partner beekeepers we work with
4. BIPEA, an added value that enhances our legitimacy
Performing analyses is good, but being 100% sure of the results is even better!
But how can we be sure that all these results are reliable?
As we mentioned earlier, Céline relies on current normative standards for comparison, but to go even further, let's take a closer look at BIPEA, an association of which we are a part.
Founded in 1970, BIPEA (Bureau Interprofessionnel d’Études Analytiques) conducts inter-laboratory comparisons. Its objective is to help them improve the reliability of their results. Today, it brings together up to 4000 laboratories in more than 130 countries and covers many fields: pharmaceutical, cosmetic, agri-food, environment, etc.
Each year, we receive 6 samples to analyze and return, and then we receive a detailed report on the accuracy of our observations.
And good news: our analyses are always satisfactory!
In short, BIPEA aims to improve the expertise level of laboratories and to meet quality standard requirements as accurately as possible. It is a real added value that allows us to continuously improve, train ourselves, and maintain the trust of our customers. It is a recognized organization with an international scope; its results are accepted by control authorities, certification bodies, and accredited laboratory networks.
Conclusion
For a honey company, laboratory analyses are more than just a necessary step: they are the key to quality, safety, and credibility in the market. In a context where fraud and regulatory requirements are constantly increasing, they represent a strategic investment, ensuring not only product conformity but also the brand's sustainability.
Although the analyses are numerous, they are also imperative for controlling the entire production chain process: from hive to jar. With the laboratory integrated directly into the company, our teams can react very quickly in case of an anomaly, thus limiting waste and losses.
In essence, analyzing one's honey means protecting its heritage, its expertise, and the trust of its customers. And in a market where transparency has become an essential value, this approach can transform a regulatory imperative into a real driver of growth.
