Honey beehives and beekeepers in the EU

Out of the seven ‘breakfast’ directives, the one that has provoked by far the most attention and reactions over time is the Honey Directive (see also Figure 1 below).
Apart from establishing rules on the composition of honey and defining it as ‘a natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant-sucking insects on plants’, Directive 2001/110/EC specifies the types of honey products that can be sold under given names, as well as providing rules on labelling, presentation and information on origin. Importantly, the directive also clarifies the labelling requirements for honey originating in more than one EU country or a non-EU country. In these cases, the indication of the country of origin may be replaced by one of the following phrases: ‘blend of EU honeys’; ‘blend of non-EU honeys’; or ‘blend of EU and non-EU honeys’.