Nearly everyone who buys honey has wondered this at some point. And then you open your phone and there's a video telling you to swirl it in water, rub it on your thumb, or hold a flame to it.
They look convincing, but most of them don't tell you anything at all.
No home test works anymore
Honey adulteration has moved a long way ahead of anything you can do in a kitchen. Syrups made from high fructose corn syrup (and newer methods that keep appearing), are designed to behave like honey. A jar can pass every test on the internet and still not be honey.
There is no way to tell at home.
One thing you can relax about
If your honey turns grainy or solid, that's good news. It's natural crystallisation, the sugars settling into crystals, and it happens to real honey.
Think of coconut oil: in winter it hardens and turns almost solid, and in summer it's runny again. It's the same oil both times, and nobody thinks it has gone bad. Honey is the same. A cool kitchen can set it, a warm one can loosen it, and it's still the same honey in the jar.
Sunflower honey does it within weeks. Acacia can stay liquid for months. It depends on the which flowers the nectar is coming from.
To make it runny again, stand the jar in warm water and stir gently. Please don't boil it.
What does tell you: a proper lab report
FSSAI sets 20 parameters that honey is tested against. Passing means passing all of them, together.
Here's where it gets confusing. Plenty of honey comes with a certificate or a test result, and it looks reassuring. But often it shows only two or three parameters that were passed. That's a small slice of the picture, and most of us have no way of knowing there were 20 to begin with.
What the 20 actually look for
Added sugar and syrup. Several tests exist just to catch syrups. They look for sugar from corn and cane, for markers of rice syrup, and for the carbon signature that natural honey leaves and syrup doesn't.
The right kind of sugar. Total sugars, sucrose, and the balance between fructose and glucose should all sit within a natural range.
Heat and age. Two tests (HMF and diastase) show whether honey has been overheated or has gone stale.
Signs of real honey. Pollen, proline, ash, acidity, moisture and a few more. These are things only real honey carries in the right amounts.
So when you're shown a report, it's worth asking:
- Does it cover all 20 parameters?
- Is it for every batch, or a one-time test?
- Can I see the full report, not just the highlights?
A brand that's sure of its honey won't mind being asked.
What we do
Every batch of HoneyDay honey is tested against all 20 parameters, and every batch has to pass all of them. We'd like you to be able to ask for that and see it.
And where does the honey come from?
This is the part we care about most. We want beekeeping to become a normal part of agriculture, the way irrigation or a good pair of hands is.
One way we source honey is by placing bee boxes on farms. The bees pollinate the crops, the farmer's yield gets a lift, and we get a different honey from each place, whatever is flowering there. Sunflower fields, coriander in bloom, jamun trees. That's why we have so many varieties, and why each one tastes like where it came from.
It also means we know the farms and the people behind the honey, which is a better kind of proof than any label.
If you have a jar in front of you and a question about it, message us on WhatsApp. We're happy to talk it through.