Honey price

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Well all you good folk wanting to sell Honey at £10+/lb I’ve a suggestion for you. I’m more than happy to sell you my hard earned crop at £5/lb in the bucket, sounds fair enough to me………….50:50 and all you’ve gotta do is put it in a jar & then open the door every so often to take the money. I’ve a fair bit so should be able to cater for all your needs.
Will keep on top of my PM’s to ensure I don’t run out of space:)(y)

If I was looking to make some money I would be tempted unfortunately my tamper labels say local and I assume my customers like the implied providence of buying honey from a box at the end of a farm track.
 
Well all you good folk wanting to sell Honey at £10+/lb I’ve a suggestion for you. I’m more than happy to sell you my hard earned crop at £5/lb in the bucket, sounds fair enough to me………….50:50 and all you’ve gotta do is put it in a jar & then open the door every so often to take the money. I’ve a fair bit so should be able to cater for all your needs.
Will keep on top of my PM’s to ensure I don’t run out of space:)(y)
When your'e passing 🚗, drop a 30lb bucket off, Suffolk honey would be a rarity here. Postage 🚚 would be a killer though.
 
Well all you good folk wanting to sell Honey at £10+/lb I’ve a suggestion for you. I’m more than happy to sell you my hard earned crop at £5/lb in the bucket, sounds fair enough to me………….50:50 and all you’ve gotta do is put it in a jar & then open the door every so often to take the money. I’ve a fair bit so should be able to cater for all your needs.
Will keep on top of my PM’s to ensure I don’t run out of space:)(y)
Going rate for honey by the bucket is closer to £3/lb so you may be waiting a while for the rush! :laughing-smiley-014
 
In other words unless you try sell at £10 lb you will never know if people in your area will pay it. All we do know is that everyone selling at less than that are selling out of product in dquick time

Yep.

Don't even have to go straight to £10/lb: start at your current price and add 30p a year. Pretty soon you'll have boosted the price for everybody in your area and your customers will go with it.
 
Alternatively go down a jar size and sell for the some price per jar,
I had the same conversation with an Essex smallholder at market today who acknowledged that selling in a 1lb jar was out of date and limited the price.

It was fine when she was flush with honey in the good years, but a couple of poor seasons has focused her mind on making the most of it in smaller jars, extending the selling period and improving the return by 25%.
 
Crickey, I sell my 12oz for £5.80 and most people will leave me £6. I go down to £5.50 for shops if they get more than 15. That's my bottom price.
I sell my 8oz for £5.50 locally (friends, neighbours, locals etc) and always have a waiting list. Put it up 50p from last year and no-one batted an eyelid. £6 next year I reckon.
Quality product deserves a proper price.
 
Is that true even for North London, West Essex and Surrey ?
:calmdown:
The bulk price has been £3-3.25 for a few years in Sussex. I think is probably closer to £3.25-3.50 now
 
The bulk price has been £3-3.25 for a few years in Sussex. I think is probably closer to £3.25-3.50 now
Pretty sure that's the bulk price everywhere. The Bee Farmer mag had a chart of global prices a while back; I'll see if I can dig it out.
 
I may be interested in buying some buckets of honey. I have some local customers that only want local honey, but my postal customers just want good honey, so they wont mind.

I am still harvesting, and want to clear my stock first. But may be interested in a few weeks. Back in the spring I was desperate for some as I dd not have enough to go around.

WoodenBeam - £5 per is just a bit too much for me right now, unfortunately I dot sell for £10 per lb - yet..... If you were just down the road back in the spring, it may have been a different story.

But £3-3.5 is definitely a price point I could work with, I would consider a road trip to collect a few buckets. I would potentially pay more for anything special like black, heather etc.. So please anyone PM me if you have a bountiful harvest and want to sell me some.

I would like to see an ethos of beekeepers giving first refusal of their excess honey to other keepers.

I love people coming to my door to buy honey, having a chat and meeting new people. But I get it for some people that's a bother. I get it that selling honey takes effort, and for some of you its just easier to bang it out cheap and get on with enjoying your day. I understand that some of you like to keep your honey local so are happy to sell it to a shop round the corner. So I dont realy think you need a slap, but do think you deserve more for your honey. But keepers underselling honey is often a symptom of a problem, so are by no means solely to blame for honey being undervalued.

Honey has a public perception problem in the UK that is tied to the abundance of low quality food as previously mentioned. People who know little about honey just perceive it as some gue to put on toast and in their mind its worth the same as jam. And that's not helped by c£&p like this:

https://groceries.asda.com/product/honey/asda-pure-clear-honey/33195
Seriously £95p per lb inc jar! We use this exact honey at my work (not for human consummation I should add). So for years this was the only honey I saw. And it was not until I got bees and tasted real honey I released how bad the Asda c£&p is. I am convinced its adulterated. It smells closer to golden syrup and had a very weak honey taste.

Look at how people view lobster, Oysters or Caviar. All once considered a poor mans dish, but now command the respect that honey deserves.

You really have to give the Newzealand Government a pat on the back for their marketing of Manuka honey. Transforming it from fodder (yes, excess was fed to animals) to "premium" honey.

I have seen documentarys about the efforts to spot fake honey and the "arms race". But I think the efforts to detect fake honey are pitiful. As is our governments efforts to promote UK honey. Way back when I was at school, we were shown the food pie chart with meet fish, dairy, veg etc. Our government recommended those proportions of food to be consumed, not based on nutrition, but on UK production. But there was never any honey on the chart. You hear about our government promoting cheese, Cornish pasties or pork pies. But the government had never cared about the bee keeping industry or considered it to be an important food resource.

Look at the horse meat scandal. OMG, some meat, with another kind of meat in it! Well the same thing goes on week in week out with honey.

Fortunately I do think there is a growing perception that honey is a luxury grade product, largely thanks to a wave of new age online health guru types. So there is hope of honey one day getting the perception it deserves.
 
After reading most people are selling much too cheap imo but I'm not losing custom so people can sell at the price they want. I think a lot of people could downsize jars and keep the same price. My heather honey I think I'll try at £10 per 228g. If its not gone by Feb I'll drop it £2 a jar.
 
Well they say there is no one tighter than a Yorkshireman unless they are Scottish. But see attached,,,, others sellers and brands available


I have no idea who is buying their product but they say “shy bairnes get nowt”. In other words unless you try sell at £10 lb you will never know if people in your area will pay it.

All we do know is that everyone selling at less than that are selling out of product in dquick time

Knowing a bit about this you have two things to consider............without giving too much away about what I know and how come I know it.......there are several margins involved there...the price is calculated to cover these AND also huge marketing, packing and labour costs. The volumes traded are also tiny.

I know what the actual beekeeper gets...and the headline price bears little relationship to the amount the primary producer is paid.

You can also put any price you like on a product you either do not have or only have a few of. Somebody will buy it and you create the illusion of a high market rate. Good luck if you get it.....but these prices truly are a niche within a niche within niche.
 
Going rate for honey by the bucket is closer to £3/lb so you may be waiting a while for the rush! :laughing-smiley-014

Drum rate for blossom honey a bit lower than that....although your bucket rate might be a sliver low. Not by much, but there are always stories of people getting more, even far more..so take it if you can., but if you overcharge and the customers finds out you can have killed the goose that lays your annual golden egg.

UK honey market is like a graduated stick...and the UK honey is in the top part, just below the niche specialities like heather...if you want a bigger share of the market you have to go further down the stick...so into a market that is more price sensitive.

The big buyers are not taking tonnage this year so far...not in any big way at least, and buyers are resistant at current rates..never mind it going higher.

Inventory at packers and stock holders is rising after a series of decent seasons (including this year..sorry SE England as you had a modest season..but you had the best of it the last few) and far from there being a rise, the market is in danger os a downwards correction for standard blossom honey. This is nothing to do with the cheap imported honeys as they are just not competing for the same customers and occupy the bottom 50% of the stick...which we are not interested in.
We are on the back end of a price spike..one that has taken UK honey out of many multiples as their assessment of their markets did not then justify the shelf space. They know a thing or two about their trade and they would not have deleted the lines if they were o0f the opinion price made no difference.

Upshot is that there is a lot of UK blossom honey swilling around right now. If the beekeepers get desperate and start offloading to get cash flow then the market might be in for a shock.

A fair price is a compromise between what the beekeeper thinks he wants for the honey and what the customer is comfortable to pay...and the market is determined by supply and demand, not beekeepers cost base.

Niche markets excepted of course...if you are in a modest honey area with strong local demand the sky is the limit.
 
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ITLD……..very well said & a very true observation of the market place
 
For anyone other than bulk producers, creating an upmarket niche is the way to go.

Create something special, tell a story about your honey and bees..... it works !
There are plenty of customers around who will pay premium prices for premium products, you just need to find a way to connect.
 
A fair price is a compromise between what the beekeeper thinks he wants for the honey and what the customer is comfortable to pay...and the market is determined by supply and demand, not beekeepers cost base.

Niche markets excepted of course...if you are in a modest honey area with strong local demand the sky is the limit.

SPOT ON - The laws of supply and demand will always dictate the price of any product .. It's easy to quote selling prices that have been achieved in unique (or compromised) situations ... but if you want repeat business and the product is a KVI - you have to be on or about the market price. You can influence the price you get with good packaging, good marketing and a product that appears superior to the ones it is competing with - but, there's always the glass ceiling if you are in a competitive situation. Break that ceiling and sales will reduce or disappear ...
 
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