The National Honey Board with Margaret Lombard & Catherine Barry (S3, E54)

In this episode, we talk with Margaret Lombard (CEO) and Catherine Barry (Dir. of Marketing) from the National Honey Board. The NHB is an organization designed with the express purpose of marketing honey. There are 10 Board Members, consisting of Honey Packers, Honey Importers, beekeepers and Sioux Honey who handle more than 250,000 pounds of honey/year and who pay a penny and a half/per pound for every pound over that amount. They have USDA Oversight, and are involved in almost anything and everything honey.

They have an incredible web page at www.Honey.com that has a wealth of information on:

• Honey bee research they fund working with Project Apis m,
• A Honey Locator, where you can find a local source of honey,
• A press kit with honey info, fun facts, press releases from the Board, and
• A host of visual material for news organizations to use.

There’s also the NHB Store, where beekeepers can get a lot of free promotional material including brochures, magnets, educational material, material for teachers and more.

The research they do on honey includes the nutritional value of honey, who are honey consumers, who uses honey in retail including consumers, cosmetics, and other uses. Retail sales of honey are declining a bit, excluding the past year+ during the pandemic, but honey use in ingredients is rapidly increasing in a variety of products.

The NHB is also looking at the sustainability of beekeeping, working with the HBHC, the Almond Board, and UC Davis, bringing all this together to form a Bee Health Collective, which you can find on their web page. If that is not enough, know they are working on developing an updated Standard Of Identity for honey.

It is safe to say that almost everything you know about honey today, you know because of the research and/or messaging from The National Honey Board.

Listen today!

Links and websites mentioned in this podcast:

• The National Honey Board - https://honey.com
• Honey Locator - https://honey.com/honey-locator

• Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - https://www.honeybeeobscura.com

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We welcome Betterbee as sponsor of today's episode. BetterBee’s mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education and quality equipment. From their colorful and informative catalog to their support of beekeeper educational activities, including this podcast series, BetterBee truly is Beekeepers Serving Beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com

Thanks to Strong Microbials for their support of Beekeeping Today Podcast. Find out more about heir line of probiotics in our Season 3, Episode 12 episode and from their website: https://www.strongmicrobials.com

This episode is brought to you by Global Patties! Global Patties is a family business that manufactures protein supplement patties for honey bees. Feeding your hives protein supplement patties will help ensure that they produce strong and health colonies by increasing brood production and overall honey flow. Global offers a variety of standard patties, as well as custom patties to meet your specific needs. Visit them today at http://globalpatties.com and let them know you appreciate them sponsoring this episode! 

We want to also thank 2 Million Blossoms as a sponsor of the podcast. 2 Million Blossoms is a quarterly magazine destined for your coffee table. Each page of the magazine is dedicated to the stories and photos of all pollinators and written by leading researchers, photographers and our very own, Kim Flottum.

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We hope you enjoy this podcast and welcome your questions and comments: [email protected]

Thanks to Bee Culture, the Magazine of American Beekeeping, for their support of The Beekeeping Today Podcast. Available in print and digital at www.beeculture.com

Thank you for listening! 

Podcast music: Young Presidents, "Be Strong"; Musicalman, "Epilogue". Original guitar background instrumental by Jeff Ott

Beekeeping Today Podcast is an audio production of Growing Planet Media, LLC