Why a jar of raw honey costs what it does

Customers sometimes ask why our honey costs two or three times as much as a supermarket bottle. The short answer is that real honey is slow to make and hard to collect. Here is roughly where the money goes.

One Indian bee hive gives us about 8 to 10 kg of honey in a year, mostly from the rubber flow. Moving 400 hives between estates by truck, renting space in estates and coffee plantations, replacing frames and feeding colonies through the monsoon all cost money, even in the months when we take no honey at all. Labour is the largest part; a hive is opened and checked every ten days by hand.

Wild forest honey costs more. The forest collectors climb trees and cliffs at night to reach rock bee combs, and a good day might bring in 15 kg among a team of four. We agree a price with their cooperatives before the season, so their income does not drop if the market price falls. For our 500 g forest jar at ₹650, about ₹340 goes to the collectors, and the rest covers glass jars, labels, testing, transport and our shop.

Cheap honey is cheap because it is often blended from many sources, heated and filtered so it pours easily and keeps forever on a shelf, or mixed with syrups. Our price is set so we can keep the hives healthy and pay collectors fairly. If you want a lower cost, our 1 kg rubber honey works out about 12 percent cheaper per gram than two 500 g jars.