Boosh the Bee Keeper Makes Spicy Honey

Boosh doesn’t raise spicy bees, but it does sell spicy honey. More specifically, the brand’s best-selling Chilli Infused Honey, which comes in a squeeze bottle and goes on everything savoury (think pizza, grilled chicken, wings and salad), packs the sort of punch you normally wouldn’t expect from the sweet stuff.

“I love spicy food,” Meriam Hebeish, whose nickname ‘Booshy’ gave rise to the brand’s name, tells us. “I didn’t invent spicy honey, but when I bought different samples from abroad, nothing really gave me the kick I wanted. When you try this one, it’s just regular honey and then the spice hits you with a nice surprise.”
From creamy medjool honey spreads to immunity-boosting turmeric and ginger honey, all of Boosh the Bee Keeper’s products begin with experimentation in Hebeish’s home, with her family. “Whenever I want to try something new, I gather my family and keep improving on the recipe until we reach something we like. I wish I could tell you there’s an R&D team behind all this, but that’s not the case at all.”

Before launching the brand in 2023, many people Hebeish spoke to had advised her to avoid the honey industry, which was described to her as difficult to penetrate because it has very established market leaders. But Hebeish’s vision for her brand was different. “I didn’t want to be in competition with people,” Hebeish says, “I wanted to find my own space and launch products that are not in the market.”With this principle in mind, Hebeish launched Boosh the Bee Keeper in partnership with family friends who owned a farm in Minya. “Honey is one of the most adulterated products in the world,” she says, “so for me it’s very important to keep Boosh single source, from this farm, because I trust them.” An end-to-end operation, the farm also houses the factory where the final products are created, which is why Hebeish is always confident in the high quality she’s offering her customers.

In the beginning, Hebeish used to go to different food markets, pop-ups and bazaars to trial her products in the market. Now, in addition to its own website, Boosh is sold in supermarkets like Oscar, Bestway, and Premium Mart, as well as delivery platforms like Rabbit. And yet, for Hebeish, “The aim isn’t to grow and become a massive brand,” she tells us. Instead, Hebeish wants Boosh to always remain to its principles of using only single source honey and natural components in her recipes, and to keep experimenting with new bold new flavour combinations.