SFWB recently got the chance to attend the Honey Editors Summit, which took place September 21-22 in Chicago. The event kicked off at the Little Goat Kitchen, where the National Honey Board gave an overview on honey and products that contain it, and later expanded to tours of a brewery, wholesaler bread business, urban apiary, and Eli’s Cheesecake.
Honey is a better choice to use in breads, snacks, and other bakery products, but a single honey bee actually only produces 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey during its lifetime. Although there are 20,000 known species of bees, only seven species of honey bees are recognized, and roughly 66% of honey consumption in the U.S. is imported, from countries like Vietnam, Argentina, India, Brazil, and Ukraine. Even rarer is organic honey; there’s only one supplier in the U.S., so when a product made with honey says it’s organic, there’s a reason it might be pricier in the grocery store than a non-organic honey product.