Only three people in Nairobi sell pure unadulterated honey, according to a report released last week by the main stakeholders in the industry.
A shock to many Kenyans who have been buying pure honey from work mates, supermarkets, side hustlers and even street vendors, it was noted that almost all the honey sold in Nairobi is fake, and some of it has actually no relationship with bees.
At the top of the most fake honey are the Maasai who hawk honey around in plastic containers. According to bees that were interviewed, there was little relationship between the substance peddled around in containers and what bees produced. The bees were unable to identify the products that were on sale with most of it being identified as poisonous to bees.
“You keep buying honey from people who were born in Limuru and have never been outside the Nairobi Metropolitan. Those people do not even know how a beehive looks like. What else would you expect from them?”
How then can Nairobians identify real honey? That is a task almost as hard as finding an ethical traffic policeman in Kenya. However, the surest way to ensure you have real honey is to get it from the bees yourself. That was an easy task in the age of hunting and gathering, but in the age of Facebook and Instagram, you can check with Patience’s Bees Honey.
