It's pure honey for money

The shop that sells pure honey in the city. By Faris Arakkal HEARING the word 'honey' is sweet and it is much sweeter to know that a small shop in the city has been selling pure honey for 70 years. The 'beehive' in a small corner of the city is the first outlet under Thrissur District Honey Bee Nurturing Society registered under the Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan. The society has now 513 members in the district assigned to collect honey for the shop. They collect fresh honey from different parts of the state for the shop. Collecting honey is not that easy and processing needs hard work. The temperature of heating up and separating pure honey is labour intensive. "The so-called 'pure honey' is not always pure with a mixture of jaggery in it. We sell bottles of honey after checking twice," says president of the society Rajagopalan. It's easy to check the purity of honey even at homes. Pure honey will settle as a drop when dropped into water. The society also sells artificial wooden honey hive. They will arrange a queen and a swarm of bees in it. Basic lessons for harvesting are also provided. When retail shops charge around Rs 250 for a kg of honey, the society charges Rs 220 a kg. "I have been buying honey from this shop for years and I have never found anything wrong in its content," said a customer at the shop. The shop is also exporting honey to other states. Dehradun is the major hub of apiculture in India and it's interesting to learn that some honey comes in different colours. 'Red honey' and 'white honey' are the names attributed according to its colour. It is a wonder that Kodagu in southern Karnataka has honey with a bitter taste and is highly effective for diabetes treatment. The shop with a smell and sight of an old storehouse still stands amidst the snarling traffic of the city attracting customers with pure honey.