We shouldn't eat honey!

Allsorts

I won't buy cheap honey, it's now being imported from China and sold for less than a pound a jar by a certain supermarket known for its cheap prices. I buy mine from a local supplier, as I have allergies and just have a little each day, a jar that costs me 10.00 lasts me for ages. Won't buy cheap meat either, you can imagine how animals are treated to produce it, I would rather eat less meat and bulk it out with lentils or mixed beans or go veggie. I look at trolleys full of processed food and boxes of cakes and crisps, such a waste of money that could be spent on good food.

TK Maxx often has lovely, organic honeys from Greece and Italy.

Allira, I don’t eat fruits unfortunately as they set off IBS but I eat a lemon every day as they don’t affect me negatively. I do eat every kind of vegetable and love them all.

I'm sure we don't need sugar and sweet things.

Unfortunately, I like them, but don't take sugar in tea or coffee.

The honey I’m using currently comes from beehives that sit on the Scottish mountainside all summer. When I open the jar, the scent of a Scottish hillside covered in gorse and heather comes flooding out - it’s glorious. I don’t use much honey, a jar a year at best, unless I bake with it. The beekeepers had 55kilos of honey last year - they were giving it to all and sundry!

Horrible stuff with a yucky flavour but not too bad if you mix it with soy sauce.

Maple syrup is a good substitute for honey in lots of recipes.

Can I just bring up again the problems our wild native bees are having as mentioned in the OP.

I also found the following:
Native wild bees in the UK are in severe decline, with 35 bee species under threat of extinction and 13 species already lost. Around one-third of pollinator species have declined since 1980, with about a quarter of British wild bees showing long-term decline due to habitat loss, intensive farming, and pesticides.

So can you do anything to help our native bees? If you watch the programme My Garden of a Thousand Bees you'll see a magical place full of wild flowers and pieces of wood with holes (they love holes of course). It looks very much like I imagined a fairy garden as a child.

I just hope anyone with a garden can recreate that, even if just in a tiny corner of their garden.

Here's more information about native bees, and you can even get a Bee Saver Kit.
Friends of the Earth The Bee Cause

Piffle! Destroying the countryside is what is harming the eco system. Schools need to teach about how nature works. I don't think this government understands how vital plants and trees are. Honey was used before we discovered sugar, it's a perfectly natural food.

I buy local honey (from a family in the next village). The only supermarket honey I’ve bought in the last decade or so is single-apiary honey from M&S.

Isn't honey almost pure sugar?

Yes but it has positive properties that refined sugar does not have.

no it isnt
www.verywellhealth.com/honey-vs-sugar-11825483

People have known about the healing properties of honey for a long time.
Great for sore throats.

But yes, it has to be the proper types of organic honey mentioned in a few posts upthread.

mum2three

Piffle! Destroying the countryside is what is harming the eco system. Schools need to teach about how nature works. I don't think this government understands how vital plants and trees are. Honey was used before we discovered sugar, it's a perfectly natural food.

You can still help the endangered native bees even if you eat honey.

Honey is harvested the same way silk is harvested from silkworms, using the insects as workers. So it's a natural food but farmed just like all our food, and that always has implications for the natural world.

And if imported from New Zealand where the country is fast and the bees not particularly endangered?

VAST not fast!

We have one hive in our garden and consume the honey made by our own bee's. We support other pollinators by keeping our garden as natural as we possibly can. We don't mow the grass and encourage wild flowers rather than planting hybrids. We have bee hotels and keep small piles of rotting wood for all manner of small creatures.

For this reason I haven't eaten honey for many years. Instead I make dandelion "honey"
My Granddaughter always asks for Nanas special honey.

vegansrock

Maple syrup is a good substitute for honey in lots of recipes.

Love both!

Borfmum

We have one hive in our garden and consume the honey made by our own bee's. We support other pollinators by keeping our garden as natural as we possibly can. We don't mow the grass and encourage wild flowers rather than planting hybrids. We have bee hotels and keep small piles of rotting wood for all manner of small creatures.

Sounds wonderful

Used to keep a small number of hives We now only have one hive and that was one that a wild swarm decided to move into. Occasionally we might take honey from a single frame. Even so the hive can become really light at the end of winter and in which case we will feed them. After all they are good pollinators

suelld

And if imported from New Zealand where the country is fast and the bees not particularly endangered?

Bees native to New Zealand still need help. I found this:
While keeping honey bees is relatively easy, they’re not native to New Zealand - meaning that they’re in direct competition with our native bee species. None of the 28 species of bees native to the island produce honey, rendering them less profitable than the farmed honey bee, but they remain vital to New Zealand’s ecosystem. As many as 224 plant species depend on native bee species to pollinate them, but they can be disrupted by the more social and aggressive honey bee.

I only buy locally produced honey to have with my wild foraged teas. Nettle is an excellent source of nutrients, add a few Cleavers and Dandelion - even better.