Is this raw honey? (video included) I bought this honey at a farmers market.

[Jay Lakota]

I bought some “raw” honey at a farmers market today. But from pictures I’ve seen online of raw honey, and from descriptions of raw honey, the honey I bought doesn’t seem to me to be raw. This short video says/shows what I’m talking about: https://youtu.be/kCEuEJ4sJ6s

Your input would be appreciated. Thank you.

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Jay—I am the moderator for the Forum. I have 25 hives, 5 years a feral beekeeper, no treatments, foundationless, all rescued bees in LA. I will answer your questions and fill in some other information so the post will educate others about honey qualities and the inputs necessary to produce good raw honey.
First—let’s define the terms. “Raw” honey is not a regulated term, so anyone may slap it on a label. The ONLY term that is legally regulated is “organic” which has many defined, regulatory situations for raising bees and taking their honey to be able to label it as “organic” However, most big concerns are not going to bother with Farmer’s Markets to sell, so unless the seller is going to the trouble of buying up cheap honey and re-labeling it, it is likely a local producer. Learn the questions to ask about how they treat their bees (detailed below) to get a deeper understanding of how the honey is sourced.
Second—color of the honey has nothing to do with its being raw or otherwise. The nectar resource mix from flowers, shrubs, weeds and all other floral sources determines the taste and color and consistency of the honey. Different flowers bloom at different times for different lengths of time in Los Angeles. The nectar source also determines the rate at which the honey crystallizes. Here is a very good, detailed link to explain crystallization rates of different floral honeys and to also define that crystallized honey is NOT a degraded product, as is often the opinion of the American supermarket honey buying public. http://www.montcobeekeepers.org/Documents/Honey_Crystallization.pdf
Third—the scale of the honey production operation, the way they raise their bees (syrup feeds? chemical treatments? foundation in the frames? artificial pollen feed? migratory hive trucking to different crops all over the place?) brings economies of scale concepts into the pricing structure. Ten dollars a pound is CHEAP for truly raw honey. I charge $12 a pound. It is VERY labor intensive for the bees to make a teaspoon of honey (takes 12 bees their entire life production to produce one teaspoon of honey) It is very labor intensive to carefully tend a bunch of beehives to their optimum health and take only the EXCESS honey they produce, bring it home in a plastic crate, frame by frame un-cap the honey, run it through the extractor, strain it through a mesh screen (NO heat used to run it through bottling equipment as typically happens in big operations) and then put it in labeled bottles. I want folks to not have any illusions as to the real labor involved for the human beekeeper. Not to mention the millions of miles flown by the bees to collect the nectar, then process it.
I hope this helps you and others to understand this precious sweet.
Susan
Fourth—some 60-70% of the honey being consumed in the US currently is being brought in by exporters from China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and other countries. It is often trans-shipped with false paper work to mask the true originating country. Much of it is adulterated (thinned with water, corn syrup, malt syrup, rice syrup or other cheap stuff) and is NOT inspected by the FSIS or USDA. The US does not even have a defined standard for what constitutes honey, a situation that enrages (rightly) domestic honey producers who are seeing honey as cheap as 5 cents a pound getting dumped into the processed food market in America. Watch the movies, “Vanishing of the Bees” (a lot on the honey-laundering crime) and “More Than Honey”.
The “ultrafiltration” of honey to mask its origins, stripping out the pollen grains is another gambit the exporters are coming up with to fake the origin of their honey.
Finally, I am glad you posed this question to us beekeepers (I am guessing you don’t keep bees?) and always caution people to be circumspect about EVERYTHING seen on the Internet. This tool is simply the opinions of billions of people and carries no particular factual evidence for anything. Something about your experience rightly set off the caution light for you to question what you had seen on the ubiquitous Internet!

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Jay—I am the moderator for the Forum. I have 25 hives, 5 years a feral beekeeper, no treatments, foundationless, all rescued bees in LA. I will answer your questions and fill in some other information so the post will educate others about honey qualities and the inputs necessary to produce good raw honey.
First—let’s define the terms. “Raw” honey is not a regulated term, so anyone may slap it on a label. The ONLY term that is legally regulated is “organic” which has many defined, regulatory situations for raising bees and taking their honey to be able to label it as “organic” However, most big concerns are not going to bother with Farmer’s Markets to sell, so unless the seller is going to the trouble of buying up cheap honey and re-labeling it, it is likely a local producer. Learn the questions to ask about how they treat their bees (detailed below) to get a deeper understanding of how the honey is sourced.
Second—color of the honey has nothing to do with its being raw or otherwise. The nectar resource mix from flowers, shrubs, weeds and all other floral sources determines the taste and color and consistency of the honey. Different flowers bloom at different times for different lengths of time in Los Angeles. The nectar source also determines the rate at which the honey crystallizes. Here is a very good, detailed link to explain crystallization rates of different floral honeys and to also define that crystallized honey is NOT a degraded product, as is often the opinion of the American supermarket honey buying public. http://www.montcobeekeepers.org/Documents/Honey_Crystallization.pdf
Third—the scale of the honey production operation, the way they raise their bees (syrup feeds? chemical treatments? foundation in the frames? artificial pollen feed? migratory hive trucking to different crops all over the place?) brings economies of scale concepts into the pricing structure. Ten dollars a pound is CHEAP for truly raw honey. I charge $12 a pound. It is VERY labor intensive for the bees to make a teaspoon of honey (takes 12 bees their entire life production to produce one teaspoon of honey) It is very labor intensive to carefully tend a bunch of beehives to their optimum health and take only the EXCESS honey they produce, bring it home in a plastic crate, frame by frame un-cap the honey, run it through the extractor, strain it through a mesh screen (NO heat used to run it through bottling equipment as typically happens in big operations) and then put it in labeled bottles. I want folks to not have any illusions as to the real labor involved for the human beekeeper. Not to mention the millions of miles flown by the bees to collect the nectar, then process it.
I hope this helps you and others to understand this precious sweet.
Susan
Fourth—some 60-70% of the honey being consumed in the US currently is being brought in by exporters from China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and other countries. It is often trans-shipped with false paper work to mask the true originating country. Much of it is adulterated (thinned with water, corn syrup, malt syrup, rice syrup or other cheap stuff) and is NOT inspected by the FSIS or USDA. The US does not even have a defined standard for what constitutes honey, a situation that enrages (rightly) domestic honey producers who are seeing honey as cheap as 5 cents a pound getting dumped into the processed food market in America. Watch the movies, “Vanishing of the Bees” (a lot on the honey-laundering crime) and “More Than Honey”.
The “ultrafiltration” of honey to mask its origins, stripping out the pollen grains is another gambit the exporters are coming up with to fake the origin of their honey.
Finally, I am glad you posed this question to us beekeepers (I am guessing you don’t keep bees?) and always caution people to be circumspect about EVERYTHING seen on the Internet. This tool is simply the opinions of billions of people and carries no particular factual evidence for anything. Something about your experience rightly set off the caution light for you to question what you had seen on the ubiquitous Internet!

[Shubham Rana]

We supply bulk raw honey and bee by-products packaged according to our customers specific requirements. Our standard packaging practice includes storing honey in MS drums or bucket scoated with epoxy in 300 kg food grade which is ideal for honey storage. This food grade material helps the honey to maintain its quality and freshness

[Henry Hoe]

We supply Comvita manuka honey. They come with UMF™ grade-specific induction seal.

[Author]

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