10/01/2026
According to the Codex alimentarius, honey is defined as “the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant-sucking insects on the living .
AUNTHENCITY ISSUES.
Honey is a natural sweetener produced by honeybees, through collecting nectar, secretions, and/or honeydew from plants, which is then mixed with their own secretions, transformed, dehydrated and stored. Thus, the addition of known or unknown additives to honey is prohibited (National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, 2011, Directive, 2001, Codex Standard, 2001, Tsagkaris et al., 2021; L. Wu, et al., 2017).
However, the practice of honey adulteration is an ongoing global problem, which has been causing a notorious negative impact on the development of the honey industry. Honey authenticity issues have been reported and summarized, being thus divided into two categories:
i) direct methods related to honey adulteration with addition of sweeteners or mixed honeys, as well as incorrect description as high-quality honey of geographical and botanical origins and organic products;
ii) indirect methods related to feeding honeybee colonies, harvesting unripe honey, as well as inappropriate handling and storage.
- Direct method of honey adulteration is by adding low-quality monofloral or multifloral honey to valuable monofloral honey (Beitlich et al., 2014, Devi et al., 2018). The monofloral honey is predominantly from one nectar source, whose pollen proportion should be above 45% for most species, which possesses distinctive organoleptic characteristics, like highly distinguishing aromas, and thus is considered as a premium product (Machado et al., 2020, Soares et al., 2017).
Contrarily, multifloral honey is obtained when bees collect nectar from different types of flowers, with pollen grains from several plant species, none of which are considered predominant. In recent years, there has been an increasing consumer demand for monofloral honey, which may reach a higher market value than multifloral one due to its particular flavor, taste, and pharmacological properties (Geana and Ciucure, 2020, Tsagkaris et al., 2021).
These honey adulteration methods have been reported worldwide, e.g., decolorization of cheap r**e honey to resemble the high-priced acacia honey (Se, Wahab, Syed Yaacob, & Ghoshal, 2019).
Other direct honey adulteration methods include confusing labeling, such as misleading geographical and botanical origins and/or organic certification (Geana and Ciucure, 2020, Rodopoulou et al., 2022, Yayinie et al., 2021). According to the geographical origin of production, honey can be linked with specific areas under the labels of Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geographical Identification (PGI) (Machado et al., 2020, Tsagkaris et al., 2021).
Source: National Library of Medicine (NLM)
The Multi floral or poly floral honey is most common in Nigeria.
