Selling honey in the UK: labels, rules and records

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Do I need to register to sell honey?

Not for small, local, direct sales of your own plain honey. Honey is a primary product, and beekeeping, including extracting and jarring at your own premises, counts as primary production. 1 The food-hygiene rules, and the duty to register inside them, do not apply to a producer who supplies small quantities of primary products direct to the final consumer, or to local shops that sell to the public. 2 So selling your own honey at the gate, at a market or to the village shop needs no registration.

“Small quantity” has no figure in law for honey: the English hygiene regulations set one only for poultry meat, and the guidance behind the rule leaves it to national practice. 5 1 Your council’s environmental-health team applies it, so a quick email settles your case, and some markets ask for registration anyway. The official guidance is food business registration on GOV.UK.

What must be on a honey label?

England, Wales and Scotland each have their own Honey Regulations, made to the same pattern, so the label below works across Great Britain. 6 Northern Ireland has its own regulations and follows EU labelling rules, so check locally there. For prepacked honey your label needs: 7

• The name of the food. “Honey” is a reserved description, and specific types have their own defined names: comb honey must be called “comb honey”, and honey with pieces of comb in it “chunk honey” or “cut comb in honey”. Cut comb and comb honey covers them. Name a flower or a place and the honey must live up to it: “Sussex honey” must come wholly from Sussex, and “lavender honey” wholly or mainly from lavender. 6
• Net weight in grams or kilograms, at least 4 mm high on the usual jar sizes. Ounces may be added, but no more prominent than the metric figure. Common UK jar sizes are 227 g (8 oz), 340 g (12 oz) and 454 g (1 lb). 7 8 The honey jar calculator works out how many of each a bucket fills.
• Your name and address. The business responsible for the honey, so the buyer can contact someone. For your own honey, that is you. 9
• A best-before date. No period is set in law, and honey keeps for years, so the date is your call. Write it with a day and month and it doubles as the lot mark. For honey that keeps more than 18 months the year alone is allowed (“best before end 2028”), but then you need a separate lot mark. 7 9
• Storage conditions, only if the honey needs particular storage to keep until that date. 7
• A lot mark for traceability. A best-before date that shows at least the day and month can double as the lot mark; a month/year-only date needs a separate lot number. If you use a code rather than a date, put an L in front of it (for example “L2026-07”). 7
• Country of origin. For your own honey, “Origin: UK” or “Product of the UK”. Honey harvested in more than one country may carry “blend of honeys from more than one country”, or similar wording, instead of the list. 6 7

Which jars need the full label? The full set applies to prepacked honey: jars that go through a shop, or that you post. Jars you fill and sell yourself, in person, at the gate or from your own stall, count as prepacked for direct sale. Those legally need only the name and the origin, plus an ingredients list with allergens picked out if anything has been added. 7 10 Put the full label on every jar and the distinction never matters.

A compliant label is not enough on its own. Anything sold as honey must meet the standard in the regulations. That means no more than 20% water (23% for heather honey), nothing added, no pollen removed beyond what cleaning makes unavoidable, no fermentation, and no heating that destroys or significantly inactivates its natural enzymes. 6

Flavoured honey and allergens

Plain honey contains none of the 14 allergens the law makes you declare. Add anything, such as almonds, walnuts or ginger, and it is no longer legally “honey”. 6 You then have to list the ingredients, and pick out any of the 14 declarable allergens, usually in bold. 9

Tree nuts are on that list, so “honey with almonds” needs an ingredients list with almonds in bold. Ginger is not an allergen, but “honey with ginger” still needs the ingredients list. Jars you fill and sell yourself, including from your own market stall, are prepacked for direct sale and need the name and that full ingredients list on the jar too. 10

The withdrawal period can stop a sale

If you treat your colonies, the product’s withdrawal period decides when that hive’s honey may be sold or eaten. The withdrawal period is one of the details GOV.UK requires you to record every time you treat. 11 What it means for the honey is set by the label on the product in your hand, so read that. Honey taken during a treatment, or before the stated period has passed, must not be sold or eaten. It is worth knowing before you plan a harvest around a market date - the treatment guide covers the dates to record.

Weights and measures

A jar is a packaged good, so the contents must match the label. There are two ways to fill. Under the minimum system every jar holds at least the stated weight, and no records are required. Under the average system a batch averages the stated weight within set tolerances, and you must record your sample checks and keep them for at least a year. For a few dozen jars the minimum system is the easy answer: fill every jar to the stated weight or a little over. 8

GOV.UK is blunt about the equipment. There are no hard and fast rules, but you cannot use domestic scales to weigh goods you intend to sell. Trading Standards will tell you what counts as suitable. 8 Scales approved for trade carry an M mark, the letter M and a year in a rectangle, beside the CE or UKCA mark, and the smallest bench models are not expensive. 12 A note of the date, batch and a few sample weights is worth keeping whichever system you use.

The records worth keeping

Beyond the label, a small paper trail keeps you compliant and saves headaches:

• Batch records - which hives and extraction date each lot number came from, so a question about one jar traces back to its source.
• Sales records - who bought what and when. For shop and trade customers this is a legal duty: the traceability rule says you must be able to name every business you supplied. Private customers are not covered. 13 Keep the records for the shelf life of the batch plus six months, the period the official guidance on that rule suggests. 14
• Medicine records - if you treat your colonies, the veterinary medicines record is a legal duty in its own right. The beekeeper’s veterinary medicines record covers it.

Pricing your honey

Prices vary by region and season. Look at what local honey sells for at the farm shops and markets near you, and price against that. Shops that sell it on pay a lower trade price per jar. Whatever you charge, record jar sizes and batch numbers against each sale. It turns “I think that batch went to the farm shop” into something you can check.

Fruit, juice and ferments made with honey, and the alcohol rules once a ferment makes alcohol, are in Honey with fruit, and honey ferments.