BRC Talks About Changes in the Retail Industry in Retail 2020

Honey Holding, manufacturer and supplier of industrial honey, serves as a member of the National Honey Board. To display the quality of its products, Honey Holding also pursed certification from the British Retail Consortium (BRC). 

BRC influences the retail industry by leading its members to participate in the discussion of influential issues. It also conducts campaigns to promote the advancement of the UK retail market, such as Retail 2020. According to BRC, changes in the industry have been accelerating for the past five years. With this pace of change, the Consortium realized the need for assessment to determine how this transformation will affect the future of the retail industry. 

Retail 2020 features a three-part comprehensive study on productivity, employment, and other insights affecting the retail industry in the coming years. Its first report, Retail 2020: Fewer but Better Jobs, lays out the possibilities in the workplace landscape. Part two, called What Our People Think, features detailed survey results of retail workers. The third report, Retail 2020: Solutions, explores plans addressing challenges faced by the industry.

Five Forms of Honey

The certification agency A Bee Organic has accredited Honey Holding l, Ltd., for its processing of bulk organic honey. As a supplier for major bakeries and food processors, Honey Holding provides its customers with various forms of high quality honey.

According to the National Honey Board, there are five forms of honey:

- Liquid. The most common form found in many households, liquid honey is often used as an ingredient in cooking and baking. It is harvested from honeycombs via straining or centrifugal force. 

- Comb. Comb honey is served with the honeybee’s wax comb. Honey and comb alike can be eaten and are packaged in small squares or entire frames. 

- Cut Comb in Liquid Honey. A combination of liquid and comb forms, this is liquid honey with small chunks of comb honey added. 

- Whipped. Over time, liquid honey forms coarse granules. In a controlled setting, these crystals become finer, thus changing the honey’s consistency into a smooth, spreadable form called whipped or creamed honey. 

- Naturally crystallized. When glucose in the honey crystallizes, turning the honey into a semi-solid state, it is naturally crystallized honey, which can be eaten directly or used as a beverage sweetener.

What Is Colony Collapse Disorder?

In 2013, the Texas-based Honey Holding I, Ltd., doing business as Honey Solutions, developed Beckert Bees as a local beekeeping partnership meant to promote the development of jobs in the Vidor, Texas, region, and to assist in reducing the volume of foreign-sourced honey entering the United States. As a concerned corporate citizen, Honey Holding hopes to promote the profession of beekeeping, which has seen heavy losses over the last decade, partly due to the problem of keeping bees safe from colony collapse disorder.

Colony collapse disorder occurs when most or all of a hive’s worker bees die off or disappear, leaving behind only a queen, a small number of immature bees, and a few nurse bees to care for them. The deserting bees also typically leave behind large reserves of food. Researchers state that the number of reported instances of CCD has fallen over the last half-decade, but the phenomenon remains a matter of serious concern to beekeepers.

In the winter of 2006 - 2007, many keepers reported losses of as much as nine-tenths of their hives, bringing the problem of CCD to widespread public attention. Experts have developed a number of theories as to why CCD occurs. These include the presence of varroa mites, the spread of new disease-causing organisms, poor nutrition, and inappropriate use of pesticides. In 2014 President Obama created a federal task force to address the problem of CCD.