Bob,
I think that your comment -
"Many buyers think all honey is the same and tastes like the blended honey. Only when they buy a
bottle of real U.S. Clover honey (unmixed) do their eyes open wide."
is one of our fundamental problems.

Apart from worthy local publicity and personal contacts - the general public still have not yet been
informed about the diverse types and tastes of honey.
This lack by the main conditioners and packers again shows that there is a wish to ensure a market
for low priced, generic, bland honey mixes. Governed by their strangle hold wish to continue in the
buying up of under priced honey.

There is a place for neutral tasting honeys, with a rape (or equivalent) base. But the price paid
for these honeys should reflect the true production costs with an extra ensuring reasonable profit .
But when these honeys are made to compete with below standard material, by being sold at near
equivalent prices - the buyers are wagging the dog too much.

Present prices indicate that the previous market was keeping the prices artificially low.
It will be interesting to see if the honey sales have collapsed as predicted due to the present
"excessive prices" being charged by producers.

I humbly suggest that Packers are not really proud of their produce - willing to deal in the lowest
grade material on the market, then selling it off as a true example of what the average producer
sends in. They are using the good name built up over many centuries by beekeepers - squeezing it to
death,  - taking us down with them.
Customers will catch on, slowly stop buying and ask why have they been taken for a ride again. Honey
in cereals is supposed to be a natural plus with which to feed our children. Care to investigate the
honey that is used!
We will be the target for a lot of criticism for allowing it to happen.
Look what happened in UK over beef and BSE, similar egs. for high priced foie gras in France  -
being stretched by cheap contaminated material.
Fruit, so good for us - push Gov'ts - except it tastes like it has never been near a plant in the
open air. Therefore, people eat less than what they know is good. They refuse to waste cash. Looks
nice though!!

Does it take much to understand why Europeans don't want hormone injected meat, GMO vegetables and
fruits or cereals.
They are no longer trusting science or the big companies that retail our food.

Trouble is that only the relatively wealthy can afford to opt out (and are doing so!) - watch
caddies in a supermarket.
These are the people who buy our honey, and are realising that the good honey bargain is not so.

The less well off are not habitual buyers of honey, so once the good will of the traditional
consumers (an increasingly aged % of the population) is a dead duck - who is going to buy honey, as
we will all be tarred with the same brush - purveyors of poor quality produce.

I ask - how many of the packers would have shopped the Chinese suppliers of the contaminated honey,
I suggest that with their ability to detect contamination, they would have been aware!
It was up to the authorities to pull the plug on the trade.

The same authorities must be made aware and ready to prevent an influx of predicted "cleaned "
honey. They have the power and capacity to do it, as long as we press as hard as the packers will
press for a resumption of low grade material.

More comments welcome - esp. if you disagree with me!!

Any possibility for co-operative buying of true honey to be sold as unblended and blended - then
properly represented for what it is  - no weasel worded labels. With a long term publicity strategy
stating what grades of material are on the market. Hence, starting to educate the consumer.
A true packer proud and clear with it!

Regards
Peter

Central France - Home of demonstrating  beekeepers.