Selling Honey in Ireland: Registration, Labelling and What Has to Be on the Jar

Register with DAFM before you sell

Under the EU hygiene rules, anyone producing honey that leaves their own household is a primary food producer and must register with DAFM as a Food Business Operator. The only exception is honey consumed entirely within your own home. Registration is free, there is no fee and no renewal charge, no inspection is needed before you start, and you receive a unique beekeeper registration number. Request the form by emailing RegisterFBO@agriculture.gov.ie and send it back the same way.

Registration comes with record keeping duties that are lighter than they sound: what you feed the bees, any veterinary treatments with dates and withdrawal periods, any disease that could affect the honey, and sales to anyone other than the final consumer. A page in your hive records covers it, and the treatments and feeding you log in Apiary Tools are exactly this.

The name on the jar

"Honey" is a protected name: it may only be used for the product defined in the regulations, with nothing added. The variants (blossom honey, comb honey, chunk honey, baker's honey) work the same way. A floral name is allowed when the honey comes wholly or mainly from that source, and a place name only when it comes entirely from that place.

Ireland's food safety authority has been explicit about flavoured honey: a product with added chillies cannot be called "Hot Honey." It must be named honestly, such as "Honey with chillies." Add any ingredient and the product legally stops being honey, so name it for what it is.

What legally counts as honey

The EU composition criteria apply: nothing added, not fermented, and the moisture limit is 20 percent for most honey (23 percent for heather honey). That limit is what your refractometer reading checks. The Honey Moisture Calculator turns the reading into a clear answer on whether a batch is legal and safe to bottle.

Net weight

Declared in metric, honey only, not the jar and lid. The minimum print heights for the weight figures are 3mm for jars between about 50g and 200g, 4mm from 200g up to 1kg (covering the common 227g, 340g and 454g jars) and 6mm above 1kg. For quantity control a small producer has two routes, and the simple one is making sure every jar contains at least the declared weight. The average system with the ℮ mark exists but it brings batch records and calibrated scales, which is packing plant territory, not kitchen table territory. The ℮ mark is voluntary, not required.

Best before and the lot number

Prepacked honey needs a best before date, and food needs a lot mark, but Irish law applies the EU exemption directly: when the date marking shows at least the uncoded day and month in that order, the date itself counts as the lot mark. Use a month and year only date and you need a separate lot number like L3 on the label.

Country of origin, and the June 2026 change

The country where the honey was harvested must be on the label, for example "Origin: Ireland." If you sell only your own crop, that one line is the whole requirement.

The bigger change is for blends. From 14 June 2026, blended honey must list every country of origin on the front of the jar, in descending order by weight, with the percentage each country contributes. The old "blend of EU honeys" wording is gone. This is aimed at packers blending imported honey, not at beekeepers, but it is worth knowing because it makes an Irish beekeeper's single origin label a genuine selling point next to the supermarket jar listing four countries. Jars produced and labelled before the date can be sold until stocks run out.

No health claims

There are no authorised health claims for honey in the EU register, and no food label may claim to prevent, treat or cure disease. Skip hay fever, antibacterial and healing language entirely. Describing the honey (raw comb, summer blossom, single apiary) sells it better anyway.

Selling at a market stall

Your DAFM registration generally covers selling your own prepacked honey at a stall. The stall itself falls under the environmental health officers of the HSE, who look at hygiene basics like clean surfaces, storage and handwashing. If you branch into anything beyond prepacked honey, like honey baked goods or hot drinks, that secondary activity needs its own HSE registration. The FSAI publishes a food stall guidance note worth reading before your first market.

Common mistakes

• Selling before registering. Ireland has no small quantities pass. Register first, it is free and quick.
• Declaring gross weight. The weight is honey only. Weigh a filled jar and subtract the empty jar and lid.
• A year-only best before with no lot number. The exemption needs the day and month shown.
• "Hot honey" style names. Added ingredients mean it is not honey. Name it "Honey with X."
• Health claims. None are authorised for honey. Not one.

Check the sources

The documents worth bookmarking are the DAFM primary honey producer registration page, the FSAI honey labelling guidance and the marketing regulations, S.I. No. 367 of 2003 as amended by S.I. No. 591 of 2025. When in doubt, DAFM and the FSAI both answer questions from small producers. That is what they are for.