Its a possibility but I don't think the local ones would have the variety. Don't be me wrong I'll always use local if I can.
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
Sorry, I wasn't clear with my earlier comment.
It's not yet clear what you mean by bulk honey. I think you mean 5, 10 or even 25kg buckets of honey. If you want to barrel amounts of honey so as to go commercial I would not know anything about that.
Up until the 25kg range I have been successful buying from apriaries. The apriaries do not necessarily need to be local as long as I trust them....
Start rant:
...although it's much easier trusting someone local than someone from abroad because of the simple fact that I can see where the honey bees live, the area surrounding the hives, I can see the beekeeper and his equipment. Last time I bought from someone locally I could see the beekeeper's equipment sticky with honey, I could see his jars which were full with honey and other jars which were still in the process of being filled with the honey extracted from the hives. It was very nice to see quite a bit of his bees coming to visit us because his hives were not too far off from where he extracted the honey (the bees were attracted because the honey smelt so good)
It has been worth buying this medium sized amount of honey in bulk because it is quite cheaper than buying small jars of honey. First because the beekeeper does not need to fill, label and clean many small jars, and second because I helped the beekeeper avoid dozens of trips to farmer's markets to get rid of those 50kgs of honey. So it was cheaper but within reason.. I'll never get close to the cheap prices you find in supermarkets with some honey 1/3 or even 1/4 the price of common varietals from a beekeeper.
If you're looking for those low, low supermarket prices, I can't find those prices without sacrificing quite a bit of flavor. Meanwhile, direct from beekeeper is reasonably cheaper (and more trustworthy) for me than buying jars from farmer's markets.
P.s if honey is in particularly low supply you will always have to pay premium for local honey. This happened when this country suffered from 2 consecutive dry winters.