About Us
The National Honey Board (NHB), through its staff in Firestone, Colorado, conducts research, advertising and promotion programs to help maintain and expand domestic and foreign markets for honey. The Board’s work, funded by an assessment of one cent per pound on domestic and imported honey, is designed to lift the awareness and use of honey by consumers, the foodservice industry and food manufacturers.
The National Honey Board conducts numerous projects each year to achieve these goals. here are a few:
- We fund research projects designed to find new and improved uses for honey in foods and other products.
- We offer consumers honey information through recipes and photographs of honey serving ideas that are provided to newspaper and magazine editors across the country.
- We help beekeepers and honey lovers celebrate National Honey Month (September), which has been proclaimed as such by the U. S. Secretary of Agriculture. The Honey Board provides information for special honey and beekeeping stories that appear in newspapers and on radio and television stations.
- We provide honey merchandising materials to retailers, the foodservice industry and honey handlers. Posters, recipes, a cookbook, stickers, fact sheets… the list goes on and on. For an order form, call the Honey Board office, or download the order form directly from this site.
- We promote honey overseas, with help
from the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural
Service.
For more details on specific plans and allocations of resources in each area, you may review the National Honey Board's Strategic Plan for 2006.
Where Did We Come From?
The Honey Board began over fifteen years ago when a group of honey producers and other industry representatives got together to discuss a powerful new idea: What would happen if they pooled their resources to work to spread the word about honey? By working together, they theorized, the industry could advertise, conduct research and promote honey in ways that were simply too costly and time-consuming without a cooperative effort.
In 1986 the U.S. Congress passed the Honey Research, Promotion and Consumer Information Act creating the Board. The Order, written by the USDA, dictates how the Board operates. The Order was approved in a referendum of honey producers and importers. This established the program for generic honey research, advertising and promotion.