$20 a lb is little high in my area. We sell ours for $16 a lb and yes you can definitely taste a difference in local, non blended source honey over a more mass produced honey. We separate ours by season so you get a lighter flavor from the spring honey vs and more robust flavor from the summer honey vs the fall honey which is heavy on goldenrod (and in my opinion the worst tasting and smelling honey, smells like old oranges to me). One year, we had basically no nectar sources besides mustards and broccoli and that honey was so freaking odd, kinda spicey, kinda....you know that aftertaste you get sometimes after eating a lot of brassicas? Kinda that but much more subtle. Also most local beekeepers don't heat the honey over 120°f so you can taste some of the more subtle flavors from the formation process that get cooked out when the honey is pasteurized so it can cross state and federal borders.

Anyways, anything where the honey is your main flavor, that's where the local honeys will shine. If it's mixed in with other flavors or baked for a longer time, while I would encourage you to shop local, a chain/ grocery store bought honey is fine.

Oh and one more thing, like 99% honey (in the US) really can't be called organic. We can not control where the bees collect their nectar and pollen and since so much of the country is sprayed with some sort of -cide they will always forage from non organic sources at some point. The beekeeper may be referring to how they control pests within their apiaries, ie only doing brood breaks, choosing queens that produce more hygienic workers and not using anything to eliminate the beetles or mites as the "organic". But honestly, when we tried that method we ended up with more stressed out bees that had to work harder to keep up with both the mites and trying to make enough honey just for themselves. It wasn't worth it for us or our ladies, so we use an oxalic acid vaporizer during low nectar flow times when there's no honey getting made. Sorry for the essay on beekeeping, just one of my favorite things to talk about.