What’s Really in Your Honey? The Heavy Metals Question Nobody Is Asking
Lead. Arsenic. Cadmium. Mercury. Not really what you want to put in your tea or on your toast. I’ve been keeping bees since I was twelve years old. Over those decades, I’ve learned a great deal about these remarkable little creatures, the extraordinary substance they produce and unfortunately, some of the questionable practices within the commercial honey industry.
Here’s something that might surprise you. Your honey could contain heavy metals. And unless somebody has actually tested it, you have absolutely no way of knowing. I’m not talking about pesticides, glyphosate (Roundup), antibiotics, or the cheap sugar syrups sometimes used to adulterate imported honey. I’ve written extensively about those subjects.
I’m talking about lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and other metals that can find their way into honey through the environment, the plants bees visit, and potentially even the equipment used to process and store it. Not exactly the ingredients you expect from something marketed as “100% Pure,” “Raw,” or my personal favorite, “All Natural.” How do you know what’s really in your honey? You test it. And that’s precisely what we do at Killer Bees Honey.
Heavy Metals: Nature’s Unwelcome Guests
First, we have to cover some high school science you’ve probably forgotten. Don’t panic. You won’t be tested after reading this! Lets’ begin…
Heavy metals and other trace elements occur naturally in our environment. Some, such as zinc, are essential nutrients. Others, including lead and cadmium, serve no known beneficial purpose in the human body. The problem is that certain metals can accumulate in our bodies over time. Depending on the element, concentration, and duration of exposure, they can contribute to serious health problems.
Honeybees, extraordinary as they are, cannot magically distinguish between desirable minerals and potentially harmful contaminants. Our Hive Girls forage across thousands of acres, visiting millions of flowers. If plants absorb certain elements from contaminated soil or water, some of those elements can eventually make their way into the hive and thus, into honey.
Environmental contamination: Industrial activity, mining, atmospheric pollution, and certain agricultural practices can introduce metals into soil and water. These contaminants may persist long after the original source disappears.
Naturally occurring geology: Rocks contain minerals, and as those rocks weather over millions of years, their constituent elements become part of the surrounding soil. Plants can absorb some of those elements through their roots.
Processing and storage: Honey is naturally acidic, generally having a pH between 3.2 and 4.5. Improperly manufactured or unsuitable processing and storage equipment can potentially introduce contaminants into honey. Honey that travels through an opaque international supply chain, changing hands repeatedly before finally appearing on an American supermarket shelf. Where was it harvested? How was it stored? What equipment touched it? Was it blended with honey from other countries? And, perhaps most importantly, who actually tested it? A pretty label doesn’t answer any of those questions.
What Our Independent Laboratory Found
Every year, we invest considerable money in independent laboratory analysis of our honey. Not because the government requires us to conduct this extensive testing. It doesn’t. We do it because I believe that if you’re going to tell consumers your honey is exceptional, you ought to be willing to prove it.
Our 2025 Smoky Mountain Wildflower honey was submitted to Analytica Laboratories in New Zealand for comprehensive testing, including an analysis of eight metals. Here were the results:
Lead - Below Level of Quantifiability (<LOQ), Arsenic <LOQ, Cadmium <LOQ, Mercury <LOQ, Chromium <LOQ, Tin <LOQ, Nickel 0.24 mg/kg, Zinc1.8 mg/kg.
One important distinction: a result below the laboratory reporting limit doesn’t mean an element is absolutely absent. It means the laboratory did not quantify it above the specified threshold. That’s why we publish the actual reports rather than simply declaring everything “zero.”
Six of the eight metals were below the laboratory’s reporting limits. The two measurable elements were zinc & nickel. Zinc is an essential nutrient, and nickel also occurs naturally in biological systems. Now, before someone concludes that our bees have discovered an underground zinc mine, there’s a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation. And it has everything to do with the mountains where our bees live.
A Billion Years in the Making
Our apiaries are surrounded by approximately 512,000 acres of the Pisgah National Forest in the mountains of Western North Carolina. These aren’t just beautiful mountains. They’re ancient. The Appalachian Mountains began forming more than a billion years ago. Over immense periods of geological time, mountain-building events, erosion, heat, and pressure created the complex mineral composition of the rocks and soils we see today.
I asked our neighbor, geoscientist Dr. Thomas Scott, former Assistant State Geologist with the Florida Geological Survey, to help explain the relationship between our mountain geology and the trace elements found in our honey. His explanation was fascinating.
As Appalachian rocks weather, their minerals become incorporated into the soil. Plants absorb certain elements through their root systems, and those elements can eventually become part of their flowers and pollen.Our bees then visit those flowers. In other words, the mineral composition of our honey can reflect the geology of the very mountains where our bees forage.
Think about that. The same ancient geological processes that helped create these magnificent mountains can influence the chemistry of the plants growing on them today. That’s quite a story for a spoonful of honey.
Our laboratory results provide measurable information about the honey our bees produce. That’s a lot more useful than another marketing slogan. Walk through almost any supermarket or peruse a honey packers website and examine and you’ll see such eye catching labels such as, “Pure Honey,” “Raw Honey,” “Premium Quality.” I found a packer who makes the claim of, “Americas Purest Honey.”
Wonderful.
But try finding the actual laboratory reports showing the concentrations of lead, cadmium, arsenic, or mercury in those products… or anything else Killer bees honey tests for. Good luck.
I’m not suggesting that every commercially available honey contains dangerous levels of heavy metals. That would be irresponsible. What I am suggesting is that without independent testing, neither the producer nor the consumer can establish the actual concentrations of metals, agro-chemicals such as glyphosate or syrups in a particular batch. And that’s a distinction worth understanding.
Honey is a natural product. Its composition varies according to geography, floral sources, environmental conditions, and handling.A honey harvested near an industrial area may have a different contaminant profile from honey produced deep within a protected forest. But location alone is no guarantee of purity. That’s why we test and publish the results.
Our 2026 Harvest: Continuing the Commitment
For 2026, we again submitted our honey to ALS Analytica Laboratories for comprehensive evaluation. This year’s published testing program includes our Smoky Mountain Wildflower, Sourwood, and Summer Sweet honeys, with analyses covering contaminants, authenticity, and other important measures of quality. All results of all yearly reports are available on our website. And that’s an important point. We’re not asking customers to take our word for it. We provide the scientific documentation so you can examine the results yourselves. Because when it comes to something you’re feeding your family, our girls believe you deserve more than a beekeeper’s assurances.
Creative Marketing
Raw. Pure. Natural. Organic. Sustainable. Some of those words describe meaningful production practices. Others are used so loosely that they’ve become little more than marketing decorations. But none of them, by itself, tells you whether a particular jar of honey contains measurable concentrations of heavy metals. A laboratory report does. Even laboratory results must be interpreted correctly. Every analytical method has detection limits, reporting limits, and measurement uncertainties.That’s how science works.
At Killer Bees Honey, we publish our results because we believe consumers deserve the opportunity to distinguish between a marketing claim and independently measured evidence.
We’ve tested our honey for agricultural chemicals, including glyphosate, for added sugars, for heavy metals, and for the natural biological activity that makes exceptional honey so fascinating. These tests aren’t inexpensive. But neither is maintaining the integrity of a product you’ve spent a lifetime learning to produce.
Here’s my challenge to other honey producers: Show us your laboratory reports, if any. Not a certificate with a fancy logo. Not another declaration that your honey is “100% Pure.” Show consumers the actual analytical results. What were the concentrations of lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury? What were the laboratory reporting limits? Was the honey tested for glyphosate and other agricultural contaminants? Was it tested for adulteration with inexpensive sugar syrups? If you’ve done the testing, publish it.
I don’t expect every beekeeper with a few backyard hives to spend thousands of dollars on laboratory analysis, but I do believe that companies selling honey on a commercial scale should take product integrity seriously enough to verify their claims.
Our Hive Girls have nothing to hide. They don’t have a marketing department. They don’t attend trade shows. They don’t hire advertising agencies to invent clever descriptions of what they produce. They simply leave their hives each morning, forage among the native flowers of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and return with the nectar that eventually becomes Killer Bees Honey. My job is to protect that remarkable natural process, harvest their honey responsibly, and make certain that what reaches your table is exactly what we say it is. Pure, authentic mountain honey, backed by independent laboratory testing.
For the Hive Girls, purity isn't a marketing claim. It's science. Nature makes Killer Bees Honey extraordinary.
— The Beekeeper
