What really counts as local honey and are there really hidden benefits from your local bees? Local honey is defined as when the beehive is within a 25 to 50 mile radius of where the consumer lives. Local honey may not be so local anymore.This honey is meant to be sourced by the bees in your area using naturally grown local wildlife.With its costly price tag is local honey really worth the buy?
Recently, a family member came home with a jar of honey they had bought at a stall at the greenhouse in Brockwell Park.”Much better than what we buy in the shops”they claimed. Although I found the taste is considerably better than your average supermarket honey, was the six pound price increase worth it?
It is said that there are not only environmental and taste benefits to sourcing your honey locally there are also reported health benefits to choosing local honey.Environmentally, locally sourced honey helps keep bees healthy and buzzing around our plants. This is essential to local environments as entire ecosystems would collapse without bees pollinating our plants.In addition, local honey is considerably more sustainable than store bought processed honey.This is for a number of reasons.Primarily, local honey is more sustainable because there is no mass production and large amounts of machinery used so there is less energy used in production.A lack of fertilisers and single use packaging also make choosing locally sourced honey a more sustainable option.
Aside from the large environmental benefits, choosing local honey could have some hidden health benefits because the honey is unprocessed and does not have additives that can be harmful to your body.Aside from this local honey reportedly has lots of hidden health benefits such as, helping with seasonal allergies, helping with colds and sore throats and rumoured healing properties to name a few of the possible benefits of choosing local honey.
If you can, I would recommend looking around your local area to see if you can find some local honey to add to your tea as the weather gets colder or to have some on toast.Whatever you use your honey for you will not regret buying a jar of locally sourced honey.
