Beware the ‘Hellenized’ honey on the store shelves

Beware the ‘Hellenized’ honey on the store shelves



Thomas Gkotzas grew up in the mountains of Thessaly, where he remembers watching his father open beehives with admiration – often without gloves or a mask. “It hasn’t been proven,” he clarifies, “but yes, I believe bees recognize you. We bond with them, we love them, and we admire them.”

After studying in England, he stayed on and worked as a boxing coach. It was there that he met the team behind The Raw Honey Shop, a company that sources pure honey from around the world. When they tasted his honey, they were impressed. That encounter sparked a collaboration that grew in many directions. “They taught us what research we should do to improve it, even what to pay attention to in the packaging. They know how to showcase Greek honey better than we do,” he says.


This partnership was one of the reasons he decided, six years ago, to return to Greece and dedicate himself fully to the craft of beekeeping. Since then, he has enjoyed successes – his honey now even reaches the United States – but he has also endured major setbacks. His story reflects the challenges faced by most beekeepers in Greece.
In the mud

His greatest hardship came just two days after his wedding, in September 2023, when Storm Daniel hit Thessaly. “I knew our hives had been destroyed, but I felt like a robot, frozen,” he recalls. He was only able to reach them three weeks later, wearing a mask to endure the unbearable smell of dead animals. “When I saw the hives buried in mud, I broke down and cried.”


Knowing that compensation for Cyclone Ianos had been delayed for more than a year, he feared the worst. But then, one morning, came an unexpected surprise. The Raw Honey team had launched a fundraiser to help him get back on his feet. Strangers – most of them customers who had loved his honey – raised £4,800 in just a few days. “The first thing I did was buy new hives,” he says. That December, government compensation finally came through as well, allowing him to restore his colonies.

Still, the climate crisis is taking its toll. Each year, he sees his production drop sharply. “Where I used to get 15 kilos from the same hives, now I’ll get at most 5,” he tells Kathimerini.
Professor of beekeeping Andreas Thrasyvoulou has been studying the issue of Hellenization since 1982. He explains that to ‘baptize’ imported honey as Greek, only 20 kilos of local honey per ton is required.

“The Federation of Beekeeping Associations of Greece (OMSE) submitted a study on drought across the country to the Ministry of Rural Development last September,” explains Giorgos Leontarakis, who became president of the association two years ago. A third-generation beekeeper, his family tradition began when his grandfather’s brother started keeping bees in a bombed-out village after the German occupation. “Our generation faces different, but equally difficult, challenges,” he emphasizes. “Nature is depleted. The four seasons no longer exist, and this affects the bees. They are vulnerable to disease, their numbers decline, and they could disappear very easily.”


Greek beekeepers continue the practice of nomadic beekeeping, traveling endless kilometers so that the bees never stop working. “But this effort doesn’t always pay off, and it drives costs much higher,” Leontarakis notes.

As a federation, they lobbied successfully to have beekeeping included in Measure 23 – to ensure exceptional temporary liquidity support for farmers affected by natural disasters after 1 January 2024. The subsidy was announced at €15 per hive, but, as he explains, the process has been bogged down by bureaucracy and delays. The Ministry of Rural Development confirms that it has indeed stalled. “Beekeepers thought they would receive this money unconditionally, but production losses must first be certified. At the moment, we’re waiting for regional authorities to carry out inspections.” Officials admit that, following the OPEKEPE farm subsidies scandal, every claim is now subjected to rigorous scrutiny. “Everyone is afraid. Even fellow inspectors,” he points out.

Undervaluation and adulteration

“The state cannot simply deflect responsibility when it is its duty to conduct inspections,” stresses Leontarakis. With delayed payments and declining yields, many beekeepers are forced to sell their honey cheaply so it can be “Hellenized” – blended with honey of questionable origin and quality, then sold on the shelf as Greek at a low price. “A trader comes to a beekeeper and says: Why should I buy your honey for 7 euros when I can get it for 2? The honey is immediately devalued. One beekeeper has loans, another is paying for children’s education, another is ill. They try to resist, but in a moment of hardship, some are forced to sell at a very low price.”


Professor of beekeeping Andreas Thrasyvoulou explains that to “baptize” imported honey as Greek, only 20 kilos of local honey per ton is required. He has been studying the issue of Hellenization since 1982. “Back then, we obtained import data from the ministry and searched for these third-country honeys in supermarkets. We couldn’t find them anywhere.” In his first scientific paper in 1987, he wrote extensively about the practice. “Forty years later, nothing has changed. A recent European Commission investigation found that in Greece alone, 700 tons of honey entered the country (within two years). No one knows what became of that entire quantity.”
‘Nature is depleted. The four seasons no longer exist, and this affects the bees. They are vulnerable to disease, their numbers decline, and they could disappear very easily,’ says Giorgos Leontarakis, president of the Federation of Beekeeping Associations of Greece (OMSE).

The Ministry of Rural Development acknowledges that traceability is, in practice, nearly impossible. Even today, there is no integration between the databases of the relevant authorities. “All honey traders and processors are required to do is send an email – including the quantity and origin of the honey – to a department within the Ministry of Development. This information is not entered into any electronic database to be cross-checked or compared with producers’ records. That is our goal – and that is what we are planning,” officials emphasize.


Some progress has already been made. Until recently, producers kept a beekeeping booklet where they recorded their own production data. The regional authority would stamp the booklet and also copy the data by hand into large ledgers. Since 2021, every beekeeper has received a card – similar to a credit card – with a QR code linked to their profile in the national beekeeping registry.
Not even in the lab

Beyond the inability to trace honey, perhaps the greatest problem arises when adulterated, “Hellenized” honey reaches the laboratories of the Hellenic Food Authority (EFET) or the General Chemical State Laboratory. Even though scientific methods exist for analysis, the honey often cannot be certified as genuinely Greek. This is because the quality characteristics of eight important honey categories – including oak honey – have not been officially identified.


Thrasyvoulou’s team, with European and national funding, managed in 2021, after three years of research, to identify four new honey categories: oak, paliurus, strawberry tree, and polygonum. However, as he points out, the process for their official inclusion in the national Food and Drinks Code has yet to move forward. On the state’s official list, only the eight categories registered back in 2004 – also by his team – remain. “But fraud always outpaces legislation,” warns Thrasyvoulou. “Since then, the characteristics haven’t been updated, meaning that even for registered categories, analyses do not yield reliable results.”


The Ministry of Rural Development and Food confirms that proper registration of honey categories is essential to combat adulteration. “Some efforts were made in the past, but now we are taking a centralized and organized approach,” officials state. They describe an initiative under the 2023-2027 program, which, despite delays, is expected to launch by the end of the year and be completed within two and a half years.
Do it like New Zealand

Thrasyvoulou has retired but remains active in the Greek and European beekeeping federations. “I’m tired of pressing the state for solutions. It’s a matter of political will, and everything moves slowly in understaffed services, while fraud continues unchecked in a billion-euro market,” he says. Today, his focus is primarily on consumers, raising awareness about the dangers of adulterated honey while highlighting the therapeutic properties of genuine Greek honey. In his research, he has found it to be superior to the famous and expensive New Zealand Manuka honey. “An important step would be to use Greek honeys in clinical trials to demonstrate their quality. That’s exactly what they do systematically with Manuka,” he notes. The ministry has announced a forthcoming program to allow these new honey categories to make health and nutrition claims.

Leontarakis, from the federation, acknowledges the significance of these measures but remains pessimistic. “By the time all this is implemented, climate change and adulteration will have pushed the sector to its limits. I don’t know how many of us will endure,” he concludes. Indeed, Gkotzas, from the mountains of Thessaly, admits he feels disheartened by the ongoing challenges. “Lately, I’ve seriously considered giving up and returning to England,” he says.