It's time to talk about the price of honey!!!

Everything seems to have skyrocketed in price over the past 2-3 years.

One thing that hasn't changed much is the price of honey. Retail prices of honey at the big supermarket chains in Australia have steadily risen, but not at the rate of other groceries it seems. Much of this lag may be due to increased levels of imported "honey" and blended honey made from imported and local product. These imported honeys are staggeringly cheap, often due to increased blending with non-honey syrup. Australia has very low levels of testing on imported honey, meaning adulterated "honey" can slip through onto the shelves labelled as honey.

Beekeepers work incredibly hard to produce quality honey for their customers. There are significant input costs to honey production including fuel and other vehicle costs, equipment, containers, electricity, labour, and insurance. All of these input costs have increased, some quite significantly. Year on year we've seen greater than 30% increases in insurance costs, electricity prices have increased 10-15% and on 1/July/2025 are going up around 15% in Queensland across the board, and general cost of living increases have been around 40-50%.

In addition, Australian beekeepers now face the threat of varroa mite. This mite is probably the most dangerous pest for honey bees in the world, leading to massive colony losses every year in other countries. Managing varroa requires additional time and labour, more travel to manage hives, and increased costs for varroa mite control and treatments. This causes additional cost pressure for beekeepers to work into their operation. It is estimated that this may add up to $100 per hive per year for Australian beekeepers.

As a result of these increasing costs, honey prices need to rise to maintain the viability of beekeeper operations. The costs are simply becoming too high for beekeepers to contain within their operations and still maintain a viable business.

Taking all these cost increases into account, our honey prices will be increasing in the new financial year from 1 July 2025. This increase will be around 10% across the range of products. This increase is still far below the 30-50% increase in costs mentioned above, but will help us maintain a viable operation.