# Where does honey come from?

Source: Commodity Origins, https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/honey/ — data JSON: https://commodityorigins.com/data/commodities/honey.json — license CC BY 4.0 (upstream data keeps its license; see Sources below).

Honey comes mainly from China, which produced 444,800 tonnes in 2024, 24% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (7.9%), Turkey (Türkiye) (5.2%) and Ethiopia (4.7%) follow; the top five together supply 46%. The biggest exporter of honey (HS 0409) is New Zealand (11% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Honey output follows managed colonies rather than climate, so the leading producers are the countries that keep bees in the millions, whether in the truck-borne commercial apiaries of China and Argentina or the forest hives of Ethiopia.

*Nectar concentrated by honeybees, sold by floral source and increasingly tested for adulteration.* Also called: natural honey, bee honey, manuka.

## Where does honey come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 444,800 | 24% |
| 2 | India | 146,000 | 7.9% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 95,492 | 5.2% |
| 4 | Ethiopia | 85,960 | 4.7% |
| 5 | Iran | 80,249 | 4.4% |
| 6 | Argentina | 69,298 | 3.8% |
| 7 | Brazil | 67,314 | 3.7% |
| 8 | Russia | 65,455 | 3.6% |
| 9 | United States | 60,960 | 3.3% |
| 10 | Mexico | 57,430 | 3.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 36% |
| | World | 1.8 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 444,800 tonnes, 24% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 7.9%, then Turkey (Türkiye) (5.2%), Ethiopia (4.7%) and Iran (4.4%). The top five account for 46%, 121 countries reported output and 36% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +5% over the ten years to 2024 and -3% on the previous year.

Honey output is set by an insect's foraging and scales with hive numbers rather than land, which is why the producer list mixes industrial and traditional beekeeping. Commercial apiaries are trucked between crops in flower and worked for a surplus; traditional beekeeping puts very large numbers of hives in forest and woodland, each yielding little. The reported series counts honey declared through official channels, so household beekeeping is thinly captured.

Honey is also not one product. It is graded and sold by floral source, color and flavor, and the gap between a certified monofloral honey and a bulk blending honey is one of kind rather than degree, so tonnage says little about the value of a country's crop.


## Who exports and imports honey?

### Exporters of natural honey (HS 0409), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Zealand | $249.8 million | 11% |
| 2 | China | $237.2 million | 10% |
| 3 | Argentina | $206.2 million | 9% |
| 4 | India | $187.1 million | 8.1% |
| 5 | Ukraine | $164.3 million | 7.1% |
| 6 | Germany | $134.2 million | 5.8% |
| 7 | Spain | $102.7 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | Brazil | $101 million | 4.4% |
| 9 | Hungary | $77.2 million | 3.4% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $65.1 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Mexico | $62.8 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | Belgium | $53.6 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Australia | $45.4 million | 2% |
| 14 | Canada | $44.5 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Bulgaria | $41.6 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of natural honey (HS 0409), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $629 million | 27% |
| 2 | Germany | $253.1 million | 11% |
| 3 | Japan | $133.7 million | 5.8% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $118 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | France | $115.2 million | 5% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $76.1 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Belgium | $70.2 million | 3% |
| 8 | Spain | $70 million | 3% |
| 9 | Italy | $68.2 million | 3% |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | $65.5 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Poland | $54.8 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Canada | $47.4 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | China | $47.1 million | 2% |
| 14 | United Arab Emirates | $39.2 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Switzerland | $38 million | 1.7% |

Source: CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601).

New Zealand was the largest exporter of honey (HS 0409) in 2024 with 11% of world export value, ahead of China (10%), on world trade of $2.3 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 27%.

That ranking is by value, which flatters origins selling expensive honey in small jars. New Zealand's position rests on manuka sold against a certified potency grade, while Argentina, India and Ukraine ship drummed bulk honey that is blended before anyone sees a label.

Honey moves as an ingredient more than a finished good: importing packers buy drums from several origins, blend to a color and flavor specification, and sell under their own brand. Blending is efficient and it obscures origin, which is why provenance and laboratory results, not freight or tariffs, are the contested part of this trade.


## What does honey cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for honey and no free public benchmark price carried on this site, so none is quoted here. Honey is priced drum by drum on packer contracts against a written specification: floral source, color on the Pfund scale, moisture, hydroxymethylfurfural, antibiotic residues, and declared origin. Cooperative pools pay their members on the same criteria.

The visible references are private trade assessments, the unit values implied by customs data, and published cooperative payouts. Laboratory results enter the price directly, because a lot that fails an authenticity screen cannot be sold as honey at all, and trade defense duties create origin-specific price levels that have nothing to do with the honey in the drum.


## What moves the price of honey?

### Adulteration and authenticity testing

Honey can be stretched with rice, corn or beet syrup that is cheap and hard to taste. Buyers screen with carbon isotope ratio analysis and nuclear magnetic resonance profiling, and a failed screen removes a lot from the food market. Testing capacity, and disagreement over which method is authoritative, moves this market as much as weather does.

### Colony health

The parasitic mite Varroa destructor and the viruses it carries raise overwintering losses and make treatment a permanent cost. Beekeepers replace dead colonies by splitting survivors, so a bad winter cuts the following summer's honey crop as well as the hive count.

### Nectar flow and weather

Hive numbers say nothing about yield. A cold or wet spell during the main flowering, or drought that stops plants secreting nectar, can leave a full apiary with nothing to extract. Because flows are local and short, national crops swing more than the colony count behind them.

### Trade remedies and origin rules

Antidumping duties, residue standards and origin documentation have repeatedly redirected honey between exporters. A duty on one origin raises the value of honey from every other origin, and creates the incentive to disguise where a drum came from that enforcement then chases.

### Pollination income

In large commercial beekeeping countries, renting colonies to orchard growers can pay better than selling honey. When pollination fees are high, hives are placed for the fee rather than the nectar, and honey becomes the by-product of a pollination business rather than the point of it.

## How is honey produced?

A colony gathers nectar, adds its own enzymes, and evaporates water until the sugar concentration is high enough that nothing will ferment; the bees then cap the comb. The beekeeper adds boxes above the brood nest, so surplus honey is stored away from the queen's laying area and can be taken without harming the colony.

Full frames are removed, the wax cappings sliced off, and the honey spun out in a centrifugal extractor, then strained, settled and warmed gently so it flows into drums. Heavier heating and fine filtration extend shelf life and delay crystallization, but they strip pollen and aroma and push up hydroxymethylfurfural, which is why lightly handled honey earns a premium and processing history is part of the specification.

Yields depend on the flow. Migratory operations chase successive crops across a season; stationary beekeepers take one or two harvests from what grows nearby.


## What is honey used for?

Most honey is eaten directly as a spread and sweetener. Food manufacture takes the next largest share into cereals, bakery, sauces and drinks, where honey is chosen for flavor, browning and label appeal rather than sweetness, since sugar and glucose syrup are cheaper. Fermented with water it makes mead, and sterilized medical-grade honey is used in wound dressings.

Beeswax goes into candles, cosmetics, food coatings and comb foundation for the next season's hives; propolis, royal jelly and bee-collected pollen are sold as supplements. The largest by-product by value is not a substance at all but pollination, without which several fruit, nut and seed crops could not be grown at their present scale.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short and physically forgiving. Honey needs no refrigeration, keeps for years, and ships in steel or plastic drums or in flexitanks at ambient temperature, so the cold-chain problems that dominate other food trades barely arise. What travels with the drum is paperwork: origin declarations, residue certificates and test reports.

Value concentrates in packing and blending, which happens in the importing countries rather than at origin. Large packers in North America and Europe buy from many suppliers, blend to a house specification and own the brands, so beekeepers sell into a market with far fewer buyers than sellers.

The single points of failure are biological and analytical. Colony losses cannot be fixed by paying more within a season, and the authority to call a consignment genuine rests with a small number of laboratories and reference databases, so a dispute over method can strand cargo already on the water.


## Timeline

- 1987: Varroa destructor is found in the United States. The parasitic mite spread through managed colonies and made chemical treatment and higher winter losses a permanent condition of commercial beekeeping. (https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/br/ccd/index/)
- 2001: The European Union adopts its honey directive. Directive 2001/110/EC defined honey and barred the addition of any other ingredient, giving regulators a legal test that adulteration cases are still argued against. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32001L0110)
- 2001-12: The United States imposes antidumping duties on honey from China. The duties redrew honey trade routes and created the commercial incentive to disguise origin that enforcement has pursued ever since. (https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-and-cbp-announce-charges-linked-major-commercial-fraud-enterprise)
- 2006-10: Beekeepers report colony collapse disorder. United States beekeepers reported losing 30 to 90 percent of hives to colonies that emptied of adult bees, and no single cause was ever proven, which pushed hive health to the center of the industry. (https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/br/ccd/index/)
- 2013-02: Charges are announced in a honey transshipment case. Two companies and five individuals were charged with mislabeling and transshipping Chinese-origin honey to avoid more than $180 million in antidumping duties, showing how deep origin fraud ran. (https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-and-cbp-announce-charges-linked-major-commercial-fraud-enterprise)
- 2023-03: An EU coordinated action reports on honey authenticity. Of 320 honey consignments sampled at the EU border between November 2021 and February 2022, 147, or 46 percent, carried at least one marker of added sugar, against 14 percent in the 2015 to 2017 exercise. (https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-network/eu-coordinated-actions/honey-2021-2022_en)
- 2024: The European Union requires origin listing on honey blends. Directive (EU) 2024/1438 replaced the blend-of-EU-honeys formula with named countries of harvest in descending order of weight, making provenance a labeled fact rather than a trade secret. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/1438/oj)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most honey

China produced 444,800 tonnes in 2024, 24% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 7.9%. Production follows hive numbers rather than acreage, so both industrial and traditional beekeeping countries appear near the top. Output was reported by 121 countries, and 36% came from outside the top ten.

### how do you tell if honey is fake

By laboratory testing, not taste. Carbon isotope ratio analysis detects cane and corn syrup, nuclear magnetic resonance profiling compares a sample against reference honeys, and pollen analysis checks the declared floral source. In an EU border exercise reported in March 2023, 46 percent of sampled consignments showed at least one marker of added sugar.

### why is manuka honey so expensive

Because it is a small, certified crop sold by potency rather than by weight. It is graded on measured methylglyoxal content and marketed for wound care and health claims, which is why New Zealand held 11% of world honey export value in 2024 on a modest tonnage (CEPII BACI).

### why are honey bees dying

Mostly from combined pressures rather than one cause. Varroa destructor, found in the United States in 1987, feeds on bees and spreads viruses; poor forage, pesticide exposure and cold winters add to losses. Colony collapse disorder, reported from October 2006, was never traced to a single agent (USDA ARS).

### who imports the most honey

United States, with 27% of world import value in 2024, on world honey trade of $2.3 billion (CEPII BACI). Most imports arrive as bulk drums that packers blend to a house specification before retail, rather than as jars ready for the shelf.

### does honey go bad

Not in the usual sense. Its low moisture and high sugar content stop microbes growing, so sealed honey keeps for years, and crystallization is a change of texture rather than spoilage. Quality still drifts: heat and age raise hydroxymethylfurfural, which buyers specify limits for in every contract.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601), BACI HS22 V202601, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Etalab Open Licence 2.0. https://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37

Text last reviewed 2026-09-05. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does honey come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/honey/.