Bobe Ngwainbi Simon, the President of the North West Bee Farmer’s House told TFV that the way honey is harvested and handled from the hive to the storage has to be so meticulously done so that the final product reflects this care.

“The hive has to be a good hive and possibly a Kenya top bar hive, it has to be clean, the farmer must know how to handle the honey in top bars, bring the honey home and it should be in a clean room using clean containers and draining in simple draining equipment.”

He says honey should never touch the farmer’s hand and there should be no way for any dirt to go into the honey until it gets to the final packaging equipment.

If one contaminates honey, no matter how you clean it again, it is no more the pure honey you desired. He insists that a bee should not be found in honey because if water from the bees stomach gets into honey it is no more correct honey. It is important to follow the correct procedure so that when the honey testing equipment is used to test the water content to be sure that the honey was ripe before harvesting, it will not find the water content to be below 20%. It is only when the honey passes this that we can say that the farmer has good honey.

Jo Hiscox, the project Manager of Bees Abroad, Cameroon, a UK based organisation says honey has to meet certain standards to be accepted in EU and US markets. “That is where we are going to go next. We are going to take samples of their honey to the UK, test it chemically in the lab and see the quality of the honey they are producing, whether they are cleaning it correctly, because there are very strict rules for importing honey and other foods into countries like the EU and the US. Our next ambition is to get the producers here to meet those standards so that they have that opportunity.”