Goodness packed in liquid gold

It’s the ultimate ready-to-eat food. Honey is what grandmothers prescribed, with crushed pepper, for cold and sore throat and to apply on face. The golden liquid oozing sensuously from the dipper is the image ad agencies take recourse to sell everything. So is honey the new cool?

More than 500 varieties and scores of unusual flavours with limited and seasonal supply have today put honey in the premium range, a necessary luxury. And sales show no signs of dipping. Does that mean health-conscious Indians are waking up to the wonders of the nectar? Sudarshan Rao, founder of Honey R Us, a Bangalore-based company that sources exotic varieties, is sceptical. He feels it has to do with more people looking for sugar substitutes. “There is honey and there is honey,” he says. Rao likens the rise in popularity of honey to that of cornflakes in the country. “When cornflakes first appeared, most people ate it just like that, then learnt to experiment with it. Now, just about anything is added to make it a whole meal. Honey plays a major role in making it a whole meal,” he says.

Miles to go

However, S R Sharma and his son Devrat of Delhi-based Shiv Gramoudyog Sansthan, a small scale unit that deals with and supplies honey and beekeeping solutions, feel the Indian market is mostly unaware. “It is a natural process for pure honey to crystallise but consumers mistakenly think that is not good. They want honey to be liquid and dark, which is usually achieved by mixing varieties and adding chemicals and antibiotics,” says Sharma senior.

The Sharmas grappled with huge losses when they tried to bring “real” honey to the mass market. Now they would rather export it. There is no market for good honey in India, they insist.

It’s a sentiment Vijaya Pastala, founder and CEO of Under the Mango Tree (UTMT) echoes. She feels that knowledge is slowly spreading as to what is good and pure honey versus the largely adulterated mass-produced stuff.

Those exotic ones

Much is unchartered territory when it comes to numbering the varieties of honey available in India. There are said to be over 500 varieties produced by the Indian queen bee alone. The monofloral varieties, exotic flavours that are derived from single flowers or regions, or both, are seeping into the market. Monofloral varieties are the honeys that have distinct, if subtle, flavours of the predominant flowers in the region. For instance, lychee honey would have a tinge of the lychee fruit in a spoonful of it. There is coriander, Himalayan blossom, Bishop’s weed (ajwain), Jamun, even the rather hard to get mango flavoured honey, among dozens of others. Most are strictly seasonal, the flavours varying every time, for it depends on what flower the queen bee and her workers find within a 3-km distance from their hives.

While the organic, natural shelves of supermarkets stock these flavours sporadically, those that are not exported or locally consumed are sold through indie stores, through websites and at weekend fairs that bring together handmade, organic, ethical range of products for nouve riche audiences.

Grim as it sounds, the ecosystem is so sensitive that in a scenario where bees became extinct, there wouldn’t be food on earth as well. What is also worrying is that beehives from Europe and US and elsewhere are being brought into the country, for they yield more honey. But they come with multiple, mostly as yet unknown problems, slowly nudging the Indian queen bee out of existence.

As the silver lining, the fitness industry in India, while promising the perfect body, is helping hundreds of supplementary industries build their businesses. Honey is increasingly one of them. If you listen carefully enough, you would hear the bees buzzing in assent.

-New Indian Express

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