Alina Pang

So overall, U.S.

sweetener consumption is relatively flat.

But when we look at honey in particular, that has jumped up quite a bit.

And that's being fueled by sort of a combination of trends.

So honey sort of benefits from this healthy halo.

It has simple ingredients and it has antioxidants.

On the other side, just from a pure flavor standpoint, there's a lot of interest in spicy sweet flavors.

And so hot honey in particular is sort of on everything nowadays.

Yeah.

Supply is where I think it gets really interesting.

So U.S.

production is actually way down.

You're right that a few years ago there was this whole thing about the Save the Bees campaign.

Right, right, right.

And the industry is still sort of struggling with that same parasitic Varroa destructor is what it's called.

Very scary name.

Some of those mites have seemed to develop some resistance to the industry's most widely used pesticide.

The other thing that's sort of disincentivizing honey production is just the overall fact that beekeepers in the U.S.

make most of their money from pollination.

And they can do both pollination and honey production at the same time, and they do.