There have been posts, from time to time, on high priced honey, so we 
are again plowing old ground.. "The archives are good." (Mantra for the 
day.)

There are standard features for high priced honey:
1 Perceived rarity.
2. Small, and I do mean small, quantities.
3. Esoteric names.
4. Ego enhancers.
5. Great containers and labels
6. Advertised in posh magazines.
7. Hinted at health benefits (enough to get by the FDA).

I bought some expensive Hawaiian honey. It was Lantana honey. It was 
crystallized in a container so small it would get lost in a gnats eye  I 
wanted to see what it tasted like and it, in my opinion, was foul. But 
it did look good with a great container and label. I could show it off 
to my friends here in Maine, so it served its purpose. A nice tourist 
item to commemorate a visit to Hawaii. I doubt if most people got as far 
as I did and actually ate some.

It is amazing that people will buy an expensive item and think it must 
be of the highest quality only because it costs more. There is really 
nothing new here. My wife is an artist and I finally convinced her to 
push the price of her paintings up. She felt sorry for the buyer and 
wanted them to be able to afford her paintings, even though they were 
almost at cost.When she upped the price, she sold more. She is an award 
winning painter, but when the price was low, people thought otherwise. 
The higher price confirmed that she was an award winner.

The same can happen with honey, but you have to have a market that will 
purchase it. Small operations can succeed this way but large ones have 
more trouble. The rarity of the product is what can drive the price up.

Honey is not rare. Add to this the fact that people will buy the 
cheapest food, namely sugar over honey, and you need a National Honey 
Board to promote honey for any and all of its benefits, real or imagined.

If you want a exorbitant price for your local honey, marketing is the 
all in all. Not quality, not purity, not taste. Sustainability comes 
from PT Barnum, "there is a sucker born every minute". Same for Tourists 
and magazine readers.

(This post has been certified to be Walmart and Organic free.)

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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