Fraudulent honey-makers who try to hit the Canadian marketplace with adulterated honey products are in for big surprise.

A new cutting-edge laboratory to detect fake honey — the first in Canada — opened Thursday by the Worker Bee Honey Company of Chilliwack.

“Our new lab is a response to honey adulteration, a worldwide problem which is growing larger,” said Peter Awram of the Worker Bee Honey.

To make the product cheaper to produce, fraudsters add rice syrup or corn syrup to the honey.

“Adulteration is a threat to the reputation of Canadian honey and to Canadian beekeepers,” Awram noted.

The lab will be able to detect adulterated honey using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) machine.

NMR technology analyzes the entire spectrum of a honey sample, generating an organic chemical “fingerprint” which can be tracked on a database that Awram is building with samples from every honey-producer in the province.

B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said the lab will make B.C. a “very sought-after region” for sourcing honey, especially for those who “believe in authenticity,” as well as truth in labelling.

The ag minister said she is personally passionate about bees, and said one of the nicknames from the legislature she is most proud of is “The Bee Lady.”

“Fraud with the honey market is huge,” Minister Popham told the small crowd, “and I am a huge believer in truth in labelling.”

It’s the public trust that’s at stake. So if beekeepers and honey producers want to use the ‘Buy B.C.’ logo in future, the lab testing could serve as verification that the product is in fact B.C. honey, she said.

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