ABOUT HONEY
The story of honey is older than history itself. An 8,000-year-old cave painting1 in Spain depicts honey harvesting, and we know it's been used for food, medicine and more by cultures all over the world since.
But honey isn't about humans. It's the natural product made from bees—one of our planet's most important animals. Honeybees visit millions of blossoms in their lifetimes, making pollination of plants possible and collecting nectar to bring back to the hive.
Lucky for us, bees make more honey than their colony needs, and beekeepers remove the excess and bottle it. Just like they've been doing since the beginning of time.
Source:
1. Ullmann, Fritz (2003). Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry. John Wiley & Sons
Honey Q&A
What does “organically produced” honey mean?
Organic honey. It means we don’t mess with our bees, and as a result don’t mess with the honey. No antibiotics, supplements, or feeding our bees nutrient-bare high fructose corn syrup as a replacement to the honey that is taken from them. This is often a practice with large commercial beekeeping operations, and even regional honey suppliers. We wont do that. Our bees deserve better. We rescue and raise healthy, happy bees!
What is raw honey?
Simply put, it’s not cooked to death. Natural honey is a pure food that never spoils. Often in commercial operations honey is super-heated in order to help prevent natural crystallization and make it easier to pour into jars or weird plastic bears. In the big bad bottling factories the heated honey becomes a very runny liquid and this helps make ultra-fine filtering happen. This overly-processed honey is stripped of beneficial pollen, nutrients, and key enzymes which make honey what it normally is…a natural superfood. We don’t kill or remove those nutrients in the honey. It’s all there, the way the bees make it, the way it should be.
What is honey crystallization?
Why does honey crystallize? Honey is a complex mixture of natural sugars from the nectar that bees collect. Honey doesn’t go bad by itself, but it will crystallize or firm up over time. All honey does. This happens as the sugar molecules get together and form a crystalline lattice structure, bonding themselves to one another and growing crystals. Remember rock candy? It’s pretty similar. This doesn’t mean the honey has gone bad or spoiled, just makes is a bit more difficult to remove. Placing your jars in a warm water bath on low heat will help these crystals melt and turn your honey liquid again. Although possible we recommend you never heat honey in a microwave as it destroys the beneficial enzymes and nutrition, and can also make your honey become superheated and dangerously hot very quickly.
Isn’t raw honey supposed to be white and creamy?
Nope. You’re thinking of spun, creamed, or whipped honey- which is sometimes sold simply as “raw honey”. This is usually the result of introducing tiny honey crystals into liquid honey and allowing those tiny crystals to become the blueprint size for the crystallization process that happens within the jar. This results in tiny crystals throughout the jar and a spreadable texture to the honey, rather than larger crystals that lock together and make it more solid. Oftentimes you will see raw honey that is white and creamy, but not always. Raw honey simply means it’s not overly heated and can still be made and bought in liquid form, especially if it’s freshly packed.