Bottom line on Bee Free Honee: this stuff is really nice. It’s good for whatever I could think to try–in mint tea, on toast with earth balance, with peanut butter.
I can’t say I particularly miss honey, but there’s some things for which honey really is what’s called for–I don’t want to eat agave on toast, do you? And I consider this stuff a proper analog–it’s probably closer to real honey than Daiya is to dairy cheese.
There are some noticeable, if minor, differences between Bee Free and bee-made honey. Bee Free is perhaps a tad sweeter, it’s not as persistently sticky, and it also dissolves much more easily. But no question that Honee resembles honey more than it resembles anything else.
Flavorwise, notes of lemon, golden syrup, and apple juice concentrate are discernible … and, what do you know, those happen to be the ingredients!
And, to quote the manufacturer, “What makes this even more exciting is the fact that it is made in Minnesota, using strictly Midwest apples. The bottles and caps, labels, boxes that they are cased in are all from the Twin Cities. This product is as local as we could make it.” What an awesome alternative to the frighteningly under-regulated honey industry.
It’s worth mentioning that honey is only one facet of the exploitation of bees in our food production system. Plenty of harm comes to the bees who are trucked around and deployed to pollinate crops (including apples, sometimes–hopefully not the ones in this Honee).
Kudos for Bee Free Honee for knocking another item off the list of stuff that has no vegan version. My only real criticism is that it comes in a cylindrical plastic bottle rather than a bear-shaped one!
