Japan Honey

Of all the honey consumed by Japanese honey lovers, 94 percent is imported. The remaining 6 percent is produced in Japan. Yet it supports over 80 individual documented honey types, marketed with the provenance focus of fine wine, sold through specialty retailers who travel 52,000 kilometers a year to document single lots from individual beekeepers. The key to understanding this remarkable story can be gleaned from the Japanese concept of kodawari – an obsessive, exacting commitment to getting one specific thing exactly right – a refusal to accept anything less than it should be.

Before 1592 there is no credible record of honeybee keeping in Japan. Apis cerana japonica, the Nihon mitsubachi, was brought from Korea during Hideyoshi’s invasion, carried back by returning soldiers along with Korean beekeeping technicians. For nearly three centuries it remained a small, local tradition. Then in 1877, Meiji-era Japan did not wait for beekeeping knowledge to arrive on its own. It sent people to study European methods and imported the Western honeybee deliberately. For the first time honey was available in quantity. The appetite that followed was not casual.

The Asian giant hornet can eliminate a Western bee colony in an afternoon. The Nihon mitsubachi evolved alongside it and has an effective defense – hundreds of bees engulf an intruder and raise the temperature until it dies. The Western bee has nothing. The nectar plants that commercial beekeeping depended on were disappearing at the same time. Renge plantings fell 81 percent between 1985 and 2018 as agriculture abandoned the green manure tradition. Mikan orchards contracted 75 percent. Domestic production peaked at 8,500 tonnes in 1978 and fell to roughly 2,600 tonnes today. The beekeepers who remained did not scale back their attention. They sharpened it.

Japan is the only country where two bee species – the endemic Nihon mitsubachi and the introduced Western bee – both produce commercially documented honey. The seasonal flower cascade that both bees work runs south to north: renge in April, acacia in May, tochinoki in June, soba in autumn. A beekeeper who follows it knows that the tochinoki window in the Nagano mountains runs about seven days, and that which slope matters. Several of those flows are now shrinking. The Nihon mitsubachi faces Vespa velutina, a second invasive predator now confirmed on mainland Honshu. The beekeepers are still following the cascade.

Japan’s response to scarcity was not to simplify. A retailer in Kyoto decided that buying honey from a wholesaler was not acceptable and began visiting every beekeeper himself. He now travels 52,000 kilometers a year and documents over 300 individual lots. A high school beekeeping club in Sapporo decided their city should produce honey, entered the national competition, and won. A university project in Urayasu – a city of reclaimed land with no agricultural history, built next to Tokyo Disneyland – set out to create a primary industry product from a campus rooftop and won the national championship in its third year. The competition itself is held every August 3, the date chosen because 8 and 3 read as hachi-mitsu – honey – in Japanese. Which bee made the honey in the jar, and which flower it came from, are the first questions a Japanese honey buyer learns to ask. A furusato nozei gift economy has made it possible for a beekeeper in a mountain village to reach a buyer in Tokyo without ever leaving the mountain.

National Honeys

  • Nihon mitsubachi hyakkamitsu (Japanese native honeybee hundred-flower honey). Apis cerana japonica exists only in Japan. Its once-yearly autumn harvest, hand filtration, and small-colony production create a honey that cannot be made anywhere else. See the regional pages for links below.
  • Renge honey (Chinese milk vetch, Astragalus sinicus). The spring renge front once moved north through Japan’s rice paddies each April, and the honey it produced became inseparable from postwar Japanese food memory. Renge plantings fell 81 percent between 1985 and 2018 as agriculture abandoned the green manure tradition. The honey still exists, concentrated now in Kyushu, but its story is the story of what was lost. See the regional pages for links below.

Quality and Standards

Japan classifies honey under JAS (Japanese Agricultural Standards) in standard categories: pure honey, blended honey, and processed honey products. There is no geographic protection system for honey equivalent to European PDO or PGI designations. Any producer may use a regional name on a label without official certification or protected origin verification.

Import labeling requires country-of-origin declaration. Most supermarket honey sold in Japan is imported from China, Canada, or Argentina. Chinese honey enters at a cost per kilogram significantly below domestic pricing, creating a two-tier market where artisan domestic honey commands a substantial premium at specialty retail.

Adulteration testing has become a significant issue internationally. At the 2025 Apimondia World Beekeeping Congress in Nagoya, honey was permanently removed from the World Beekeeping Awards competition following NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) testing failures across multiple national entries. NMR spectroscopy detects sugar adulteration that standard pollen and moisture tests miss. This decision reflects a broader concern about honey authenticity that shapes how premium Japanese honey is positioned for export and how domestic buyers evaluate product integrity.

Japan’s first certified domestic organic honey was produced by Matsumoto Beekeeping in Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima, JONA-certified since 2006.

Specialty Retailers

  • L’Abeille (Imabari, Ehime, founded 1946). Origin: Yugeshima island mikan orchards in the Setouchi. Primary documentation source for Akita acacia, Nagano Nihon mitsubachi, yamazakura, and Setouchi citrus honeys. Japanese catalog with seasonal lot notes.
  • Sugi Bee Garden (Yamaga, Kumamoto, founded 1946). Japan’s largest beekeeping enterprise. Annual 2,400km migration from Kyushu to Hokkaido following the seasonal flower cascade. Primary documentation source for migratory beekeeping at industrial scale and for Kumamoto regional production context.
  • Miel-Mie, operated by Kaneichi Shouten (Kyoto, corporate founded 1930, brand 1998). Honey Hunter Ichikawa Takusaburo visits beekeepers across Japan and abroad, tasting over 300 honey types per year and traveling approximately 52,000km annually. Primary source for single-origin lot documentation across all Japanese regions. Opened dedicated mead brewery in a Kyoto machiya in March 2024.
  • Dorato, operated by Otoneriza Inc. (Kyoto and Kobe, owner Emi Oishi). Staff blogger Matsura Yuki. Primary source for renge honey cultural narrative and retail intelligence. The blog account of the renge front’s decline is the most specific English-adjacent documentation of what that loss means to the people who follow Japanese honey.

Competition Record

  • Honey of the Year 2025 (8th competition) domestic champion and visitor prize (double win): Urayasu Honey Project, Meikai University Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism, Urayasu City, Chiba. Spring multifloral dominated by sakura, from campus rooftop hives. The project started in 2022 with the stated goal of creating a primary-industry product from a city with no primary industry. Urayasu is the location of Tokyo Disneyland. Won in its third year of entering.
  • Honey of the Year 2024 (7th competition) domestic champion and visitor prize (double win): Hori Beekeeping (Ena and Mizunami, Gifu). Yamazakura monofloral from the Tono mountain range.
  • Honey of the Year 2024 Nihon mitsubachi division champion: Kaisen Ryori Seikai (seafood restaurant with beekeeping side operation, Ehime).
  • Honey of the Year 2023 (6th competition) domestic champion and visitor prize (double win, first year entering): Mori to Hachi to, Akiu-cho, Sendai, Miyagi. Sakura honey (Hatsuzaki).
  • Honey of the Year 2023 Nihon mitsubachi division champion: Tomiya Honey Project, Tomiya City, Miyagi. City hall rooftop apiary operating both Western and Nihon mitsubachi hives simultaneously.
  • Honey of the Year 2019 (5th competition) domestic champion: Hori Beekeeping, Gifu. Yuzu monofloral from the Ena region.
  • Honey of the Year 2018 and 2019 Nihon mitsubachi division champion (both years): Hiraouchi Beekeeping, Saka-cho, Hiroshima. Gravity-drip extraction only. The 2018 win came in the year of the Western Japan floods that devastated the Saka-cho area.
  • Honey of the Year 2018 (4th competition) domestic champion and visitor prize (double win): Sapporo Odori High School Mitsubachi Project, Sapporo, Hokkaido. Early summer multifloral adjacent to the Hokkaido University Botanical Garden. First year the Nihon mitsubachi division was held.
  • Honey of the Year 2017 (3rd competition) domestic champion and visitor prize (double win): Hagi-Iwami Airport Mitsubachi Project, Shimane Prefecture. Airport grounds multifloral.

Festivals and Events

  • Honey of the Year / Hachimitsu Festa - Ginza Kami Parupu Kaikan, Tokyo. Held annually on August 3, Japan Honey Day (the digits 8 and 3 read as hachi-mitsu in Japanese). National competition organized by the Japan Honey Meister Association since 2015. Three divisions: domestic Western bee, imported, and Nihon mitsubachi. Public component allows visitors to taste approximately 100 honeys from 23 or more countries and cast votes for the visitor prize. Suspended 2020 to 2022; resumed 2023. 175 entries in 2025. The venue at Ginza Kami Parupu Kaikan is also where the Ginza Bee Project was founded in 2006, the event credited with launching Japan’s urban beekeeping movement.

Illustrative Links

  • Sugi Bee Garden - Corporate site of Japan’s largest beekeeping enterprise. Documents the annual 2,400km migration route, honey types by region, and migratory commercial beekeeping operations. (Website)
  • MAFF Beekeeping Situation in Japan (Reiwa 6, November 2024) - Annual report with prefecture-level production data, hive counts, nectar plant area trends, and Vespa velutina spread documentation. Primary statistical source for this page. Japanese. (PDF)
  • Japan Beekeeping Association - Industry body publishing major nectar plant classification lists and domestic beekeeping situation overviews. Japanese. (Website)
  • Sapporo Odori High School Mitsubachi Project - Student media coverage of the school’s urban beekeeping program, including the 2018 Honey of the Year domestic championship. Documents curriculum integration across arts, science, commerce, and calligraphy. Japanese. (Website)

See also

Sources

  • Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) Livestock Bureau. Beekeeping Situation in Japan (Reiwa 6, November 2024 edition). https://www.maff.go.jp/j/chikusan/kikaku/lin/sonota/attach/pdf/bee-84.pdf
  • Japan Beekeeping Association (Nihon Yoho Kyokai). Domestic beekeeping situation documentation. https://www.beekeeping.or.jp/
  • Japan Honey Meister Association. Honey of the Year competition records 2015-2025. https://83m.info/
  • Kaneichi Shouten / Miel-Mie. Single-origin honey catalog and Honey Hunter documentation. https://miel-mie.com/
  • L'Abeille. Domestic honey catalog. https://shop.labeille.jp/