Market is Sweet for Honey

Market is Sweet for Honey

Maura Bennett
Maura Bennett
Health conscious Coloradans are helping to drive honey use to record levels.

The honey boon is a result of folks looking for healthier ingredients as well as innovators eager to get in the market.

Margaret Lombard is with the National Honey Board

What's really exciting right now about honey as an ingredient is that a lot of people are looking for natural sweeteners in the products they buy so everything from granola bars to cereal, honey has really made a lot of inroads in the industry. But more exciting we're seeing craft beer brewers making honey beers, we're seeing spirits. We're seeing it in all kinds of products that traditionally honey was not included in so that's been a big innovation. Honey is actually 1.5 have times sweeter than sucrose so you can use less honey and achieve the same level of sweetness. Honey consumption has doubled in the past ten years. We went from about a pound per person in 2008 and today people are consuming about two pounds per year per capita. '

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The USDA's Rod Bain says a study be the California Agricultural Issues Center found that the total economic output of honey production was over 4.7 Billion dollars nationwide. It's responsible for more than 22-thousand jobs.

Lombard says there are over 300 varietals of honey in the US alone. She says 5 percent of the Honey Board's collected check off funds go to production research.

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