It's a fine line between what you can charge and what the market will bear.
Yes, but that line is flexible and it's up to the beekeeper to take the risk and nudge it each year. Prices seem variable in Hampshire, but the 454 jar still holds back prices and packaging is often dire. Here are a few to consider:
Ashworth Honey are selling
New Forest Heather at £14/lb and in 114g at £17.93/lb; plain Hampshire Honey in 227g is £10/lb. They do make the mistake of selling in 454g jars at the weird price of £6.50 (playing to outdated expectations) and miss out on the benefit of the 340, as does the small-scale
Hampshire Honey, who asks £5 for 454 because he's only covering his beekeeping costs.
Mrs B in Alton is asking
£10.64/lb for New Forest Heather in 340s, but undersells like so many by using 454 for ordinary honey at £7/lb. Notice that from 200 colonies at 21 locations, 10 have sold out. Perhaps the website is out of date, perhaps Hampshire production was a disaster this year, but I'd bet that the giveaway price has a lot to do with it. Notice also that
Tuppenny Barn at Southbourne in West Sussex
sell honey from our own hives (although that tends to sell out very fast!) – and when it has sold out we supply honey from another local producer. They don't state the price, but if it's as low as
Farmer's Choice in Fareham, where 227g is £3.70 retail, it's bound to go too fast.
Same story heard yesterday at Stoke Newington Farmers' Market in North London: the fisherman from Newhaven sells local honey in his Seaford shop in 454s at £8/lb; I suggested he ask the beekeeper to put it in 340s. Of course, at the current size and price, it was selling quickly.
