The world's most expensive honeys: what lies behind the price

There is no official league table of the most expensive honeys. The prices quoted in the news are of different kinds: a one-off sale of a small quantity, a luxury shop's price list, or an average export price from national statistics. So for every price it is worth knowing who quotes it, in which year, and for how much honey.

Records from Turkish caves

Guinness World Records lists Centauri honey from Turkey as the most expensive honey. A kilogram was sold in Istanbul on 16 February 2021 for £8,700, roughly €10,000. According to Guinness, the honey is collected from deep caves and rocks at around 2,500 metres above sea level, only once a year, and in quantities of 10–15 kilograms a year depending on the season. The record documents the price at which the producer sold the honey, not that the honey is exceptional. A Portuguese and Spanish research team that analysed five types of Centauri honey in 2024 reported that they meet the requirements of the international food code, the Codex Alimentarius.

Even higher sums are quoted for so-called elvish honey (peri balı in Turkish) from Artvin province in north-eastern Turkey. According to Turkish media, the beekeeper Günay Gündüz and his partners came across it by chance in a cave on the Sarıçayır plateau near the town of Şavşat, at about 1,800 metres above sea level. The cave is entered by rope once every three years and 3–5 kilograms of honey are taken. The same reports say local people gave it its name because there is so little of it.

The sales figures come mainly from the beekeeper himself. In a 2014 report Gündüz said that a kilogram sold in France in 2009 for €45,000 and in China in 2010 for €28,000; independent confirmation of these sales could not be found. In 2017 he offered a kilogram at a regional produce market in Antalya for €5,000 (reports also gave 18,000 Turkish lira). The same reports attribute healing properties to the honey that no study has demonstrated.

Mānuka: the laboratory sets the price

Mānuka from New Zealand is the best-known expensive honey sold in large volumes. Buyers pay not only for the honey but for the number on the jar: the methylglyoxal (MGO) content or the UMF grade, confirmed by licensed laboratories. Since February 2018 all honey exported as mānuka has had to pass a test based on the scientific definition set by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). The test checks authenticity, not ‘strength’; our story on mānuka honey explains more. According to MPI statistics for the year to March 2023, monofloral mānuka had an average export price of 48.40 per kilogram, multifloral mānuka 25.92 and other New Zealand honeys 21.40 – more than twice the price of ordinary honey. Shop prices, especially for high grades, are much higher.

A high price invites fraud. In 2013 New Zealand's UMF Honey Association pointed out that the country produced about 1,700 tonnes of mānuka honey a year, while about 10,000 tonnes were sold worldwide under that name. British tests of honeys labelled mānuka at the time found that many samples lacked the property that genuine mānuka is known for. New Zealand and Australia also dispute the name itself, as honey from related Leptospermum species is produced in Australia too.

Sidr: a gift for royal tables

Yemeni sidr comes from flowering jujube trees (Ziziphus spina-christi), mainly in Hadramawt, which a 2023 analysis by the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies names as the country's largest honey-producing region. In recent decades its main market has been the Gulf states. Well-known beekeepers from Hadramawt and Shabwa supplied royal families and sheikhs, who sometimes ordered their honey years in advance. According to the same analysis, a kilogram of sidr cost at least US$75 in Yemen and up to US$500 abroad. In 2022 Reuters reported that top-quality sidr sold in the United Arab Emirates for about 2,000 dirhams per kilogram.

The war in Yemen, which began in 2014, has badly damaged production. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that beekeeping supports around 100,000 households and that honey output has fallen by more than half nationally because of the conflict. Beekeepers can no longer move freely with their hives to follow the flowering trees, land is contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance, and the land is drying out. Courier companies such as DHL and FedEx left Yemen when the war began, making exports difficult. According to AFP, there are no official statistics that capture the full extent of the damage.

What makes the price – and what merely decorates it

The same reasons recur for all these honeys: small quantities, difficult or dangerous harvesting, remote origin and a good story. Mānuka adds certification and laboratory numbers; the Turkish cave honeys add records and luxury shops. Turkey's ‘mad honey’ from rhododendrons has a similar allure, and we cover it in a separate story. The health benefits that sellers attribute to expensive honeys, however, have not been verified, and the price says nothing about them.

The more expensive a honey, the more it pays to imitate it. In its ‘From the Hives’ action in 2021–2022, the European Commission took 320 samples of imported honey at EU borders and found 46% of them suspected of being bulked out with foreign sugars or of having a falsely declared origin. That is why laboratories keep watch over the authenticity of costly honeys: for mānuka, tests for pollen DNA and nectar compounds; for other honeys, analysis of sugars, pollen and other markers.

The world's most expensive honeys: what lies behind the price

Records from Turkish caves

Mānuka: the laboratory sets the price

Sidr: a gift for royal tables

What makes the price – and what merely decorates it

Sources