AUTHENTICITY OF HONEY AND OTHER BEE PRODUCTS: STATE OF THE ART

Abstract

Honey authenticity is defined by the Codex Alimentarius standard, the EU Honey Directive and different national legislations. For the other bee products there are no international standards, only some standards on the national level. The review covers on the first place honey authenticity issues, while the main authenticity issues of the other bee products are reviewed in less detail. The authenticity of honey and other bee products has two aspects: authenticity in respect of production i.e. to prevent adulteration and processing and authenticity in respect of geographical and botanical origin. The authenticity of the botanical origin of honey is determined by sensory analysis, pollen analysis and several physico-chemical methods while for testing of the geographical authenticity traditional melissopalynological methods are employed. These analysis, however are time-consuming and require specialized know-how and expertise. New techniques based on analytical chemistry and statistics are reviewed. There are no international standards for the other bee products, while some countries have national ones. As these products are not so important from a commercial point of view, there is relatively a limited research in this area. The International Honey Commission works at present on the standardisation of other bee products, excepting bee venom