Honey on the street or honey in the shop-which is the better quality?

[Asiantravel]

When it comes to buying honey does anyone know which is the best quality? The price is about the same for both options.The one in the shop comes in a large plastic bottle and they tell me it comes from somewhere near Chiang Mai.

The taste of the ones sold on the street, which is in a glass bottle is not so strong but I wonder if the ones sold in shops has only artificial flavourings.

Basically I am more concerned about standards of hygiene and whether the ones sold on the street may be bottled in less clean conditions and also whether there are any other disadvantages

[mrtoad]

I think if you purchase from an establishment you'll have far less problems, tham from the street. Same with any purchase...

[CharlieH]

Why are products generally sold on the street, in most cases, cheap, inferior,seconds, poor quality, copies, out of date, old stock, illegal or stolen.

If they were anything else they wouldnt be there, old addage, you get what you pay for ( in most cases).

I would be more concerned at whats actually in it, what chemicals etc, from the street it could be anything!

10% honey 90% god knows what!

Edited November 12, 2013 by CharlieH

[evadgib]

Honey on the street usually tastes of petrol from whatever they used to clear the bees!

Edited November 12, 2013 by evadgib

[seajae]

_{I buy mine from the shop, that way you tend to know a bit more of what you are actually getting.}

[uptheos]

I think whether you buy it in the shop or off the street, there should be concerns over hygeine.

However, I think the shop bought honey might be more palatable.

[salavan]

honey on the street is cheaper because you don't have to pay the bar fine oops

[jaffacakes1]

Why are products generally sold on the street, in most cases, cheap, inferior,seconds, poor quality, copies, out of date, old stock, illegal or stolen.

If they were anything else they wouldnt be there, old addage, you get what you pay for ( in most cases).

I would be more concerned at whats actually in it, what chemicals etc, from the street it could be anything!

10% honey 90% god knows what!

Well that's the last time I buy anything from a farmers market.. Damn counterfeiting crooks.

My experiences of buying direct have been very positive. An old Thai couple around Phuket occasionally bring round a bucket of honeycombs, strain out the dead bees with a muslin and pipe it into a whiskey bottle. Think I paid 500BHT for a litre.

Some people are clearly more comfortable buying imported food from Villa market but I like to live pretty dangerously.

Maybe next time ask for a taste? Enjoy!

Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[puukao]

I do think most of the "honey" i bought was just sugar and water. I heard ants like sugar and water, but not honey. might be a myth. Was it good? It was fine. Was it expensive? Not really. But I guess I forgot how real honey tastes, since when I finally found honey that I thought was 99% real in a nice supermarket I had that feeling all the rest was fake. Now once in Laos, it was just some lady pouring sugar and water over combs and made you think it was real. Problem is, it was either this sugar and water or jelly and bread for breakfast, so no worries. Even in America, there are many forms of honey and some are great and some are not good at all.

[extreme troller]

best place for buying anything is the early morning wet market and be guided by the popularity of the sellers product. things reduce in reliability the later in the day that you buy them. buy something on the street at after 9pm and its a big gamble. just a general guide.

[edwardandtubs]

Tesco and Big C sell Healthy Mate raw organic honey. It's a little bit more expensive but worth it when compared to the potentially toxic crap you buy on the streets.

[GinBoy2]

Buy it in Lotus, Big C or Tops to be sure of whats actually in the honey. Wouldn't trust anything I bought in a 'bottle' on the street to be pure

[wayned]

We buy ours directly from the guy that comes and collects bee hives from our orchard. Small "Hong Thong" bottle 200 baht, large 350 baht, Hong Thong labels still on the bottle. We know that it's the real thing.

[canopy]

Unfortunately it is just really hard to know whether honey being sold is anything other than sugar water faked to look like honey. Oldest trick in the book is someone on the street sells sugar water with a few honey combs nearby or dropped in to make it look authentic. Occasionally you see the same thing with orange juice where they have a stack of oranges nearby even though the juice is all chemicals and sugar water. Even in Tesco I wonder how much honey there is real or fake. I really wish a consumer advocacy group would do a test of all the brands. Buying the stuff they import from Germany that goes for over 1000 baht a liter looks like the only safe bet today.

[bunnydrops]

My wife would never let me buy from the stands. She is sure it is at least cut with something. She will buy the combs. We are lucky in that her brother is a monk from a working temple (they grow most of their food) and he brings us some from their bees when he visits.

[bocceball1]

WOW...guess my mind is really in the gutter...thought this post was about the 2 legged "honey's"

[Carl64]

I bought honey at a market. 100b for 750 ml. after 3 weeks it went off. Honey does not go off! God knows what I was sold!

[jacko45k]

Honey on the street usually tastes of petrol from whatever they used to clear the bees!

And often mixed with sugar-water.

[pacceka]

Hmm... I have found buying honey a problem. It's cut with syrup, which you can taste. Even otop honey from lotus has the distinctive taste of syrup and I think has been cut. There is no diy test. So, look for taste and the unique flavour and sweetness only honey has. Use a European honey as a benchmark so you know what to look for. I have jars and bottles of the stuff that I cannot eat. Good to make candy though. 55555

[Suradit69]

We buy ours directly from the guy that comes and collects bee hives from our orchard. Small "Hong Thong" bottle 200 baht, large 350 baht, Hong Thong labels still on the bottle. We know that it's the real thing.

It's amusing how many people in this thread have bought into the corporate mantra that implies if you buy something in an air conditioned environment with elevator music playing in the background it must be really healthy and totally genuine.

Bryant's results were astonishing: virtually all drug store honey and small individually packaged honey served up in fast food outlets does not contain pollen, and 76 percent of the amber stuff sold in America's leading supermarket chains is likewise devoid of this telltale evidence of its origins, and therefore does not qualify as honey by the FDA's own standards. On the other hand, all of the samples bought at farmers markets, coops and health food stores were infused with the traces of pollen that proved it was real.

... But there are other reasons the pollen gets removed, including the desire to conceal where it comes from, and lace it with cheap additives. Since pollen's source is local blossoms, the type of pollens found in honey tells botanists where the honey originated, and whether it is authentic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schiffman/most-store-bought-honey-i_b_1118564.html

If the guy sitting on the pavement selling honey is surrounded by buzzing bees, at least we know the bees find it worth investigating.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Suradit69

[pogal]

I always buy form the street, to be sure what you get! Pure honey, I have never smelt the fuel said to be used to pacify the bees, Honey is a natural antibiotic, has antioxidants, antibacterial, anti fungal, etc. I wouldn't worry about buying it from the street but I WOULD worry about the processes involved in packaged honey, it can lose it's effectiveness during the heating processes, as well as have things added that you don;t want and really DON'T need!

I always wait for the old man to pass buy with that VERY rare forest honey comb! You're lucky you have the CHANCE to buy it!

[Asiantravel]

We buy ours directly from the guy that comes and collects bee hives from our orchard. Small "Hong Thong" bottle 200 baht, large 350 baht, Hong Thong labels still on the bottle. We know that it's the real thing.

It's amusing how many people in this thread have bought into the corporate mantra that implies if you buy something in an air conditioned environment with elevator music playing in the background it must be really healthy and totally genuine.

Bryant's results were astonishing: virtually all drug store honey and small individually packaged honey served up in fast food outlets does not contain pollen, and 76 percent of the amber stuff sold in America's leading supermarket chains is likewise devoid of this telltale evidence of its origins, and therefore does not qualify as honey by the FDA's own standards. On the other hand, all of the samples bought at farmers markets, coops and health food stores were infused with the traces of pollen that proved it was real.

... But there are other reasons the pollen gets removed, including the desire to conceal where it comes from, and lace it with cheap additives. Since pollen's source is local blossoms, the type of pollens found in honey tells botanists where the honey originated, and whether it is authentic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schiffman/most-store-bought-honey-i_b_1118564.html

If the guy sitting on the pavement selling honey is surrounding by buzzing bees, at least we know the bees find it worth investigating.

Thank you Suradit

yes this is the question that has been in my mind.

Whereas most people who have replied are implying that it is the honey sold on the street that may contain impurities and may not be the genuine product, I have often wondered whether it's the other way around and whether it is the honey bottled in a factory like environment that we should be suspicious of?

Edited November 13, 2013 by Asiantravel

[AlphMichaels]

Bought it from a vendor in Khlong Toey for 3 years now. 350THB a bottle. Use it for my coffee mostly. Shelf life is as long as it takes for me to consume it so can't speak beyond that.

When friends come to visit, I give them a tablespoon first thing to get the microbial differences of the region into and working in their system. Out of 12 visitors, only one has fallen sick while here. I make them go slowly to better acclimate.

[Asiantravel]

I always buy form the street, to be sure what you get! Pure honey, I have never smelt the fuel said to be used to pacify the bees, Honey is a natural antibiotic, has antioxidants, antibacterial, anti fungal, etc. I wouldn't worry about buying it from the street but I WOULD worry about the processes involved in packaged honey, it can lose it's effectiveness during the heating processes, as well as have things added that you don;t want and really DON'T need!

I always wait for the old man to pass buy with that VERY rare forest honey comb! You're lucky you have the CHANCE to buy it!

I have to admit I have never experienced this smell either

[Asiantravel]

Bought it from a vendor in Khlong Toey for 3 years now. 350THB a bottle. Use it for my coffee mostly. Shelf life is as long as it takes for me to consume it so can't speak beyond that.

When friends come to visit, I give them a tablespoon first thing to get the microbial differences of the region into and working in their system. Out of 12 visitors, only one has fallen sick while here. I make them go slowly to better acclimate.

Regarding pricing an old lady asked me to pay her 500 baht for a bottle but then I told her I could buy a plastic bottle about the same size which was full of honey produced under one of the King of Thailand’s projects for 250 baht, which has various certificates on the label.

She immediately dropped the price to 250!

But then yesterday another street vendor was willing to accept 200 baht , which got me thinking about the whole thing that prompted my original post.

[dao16]

I get a bottle every once in a while from a mom and pop store--they buy it from a village lady who has bees. She comes into town every once in a while and sells off her remaining honey. 100 baht per bottle. It is real honey, doesn't go bad and tastes excellent. Bit of honeycomb in there and the odd bee, which I just pull out. Think it is better than the store-bought stuff. The lady at the store said that she buys it because the lady is quite poor, so this helps her get by.

[maddas]

I heard ants like sugar and water, but not honey.

sorry to hear that, you heard wrong, ants are known to raid hives and wipe the bees out for the honey, the poor old bee only has one sting for life, the ants have many, it should never go off, and as previously mentioned it has antiseptic qualities, to taste hive honey and shop honey isnt much difference at all, sadly i had to murder all my bees because both neighbours cried allergy

[belg]

in thailand

you are not sure if you are buying some sugar mix or real honey

or you are talking about another kind, found on nana or walking streat areas?

[stopthegreed]

honey on the street is cheaper because you don't have to pay the bar fine oops

500 baht for a litre ??

I buy it from the street all the time 150 baht a litre. I had some shop bought honey in my fridge. And when I took the street stuff home, OI asked my wife to put 3 teaspoons of each into seperate containers. I did not look. When I tasted them, I could not tell the difference.

What guarantee do you have that shop honey has no added ingredients ?? the answer is none.

Just on a last note.

Archeologists, found an egyptian burial site. Over 3,000 years old. Inside one there was an unopened jar of honey. The sent it for lab tests, and it came back, to everyones amazement, that it was perfectlt edible.

[johnmcc6]

I think if you purchase from an establishment you'll have far less problems, tham from the street. Same with any purchase...

the street is runny...possibly watered down...the shop is much better.tasting as well.