Raw Honey is desired by many and rarely found in the marketplace. Raw honey is a perishable product and is sold soon after harvest. There are exceptions to raw honey being sold just in the fall. Honey has live enzymes that are valued as healers, promote good health and aid in the digestion process. So why is raw honey perishable? Yeast! Airborne yeast spores are everywhere on the planet including the Arctic. Some airborne yeast spores enter the honey when it is processed. The honey that is in the honeycomb and sealed COULD also have yeast spores. Yeast can cause the honey to ferment. Fermentation will ruin the honey. The solution to reliable sources of raw honey is in choosing a beekeeper that has CLEAN processing facility and one who stores capped honey still in the honeycomb to just before sale.

If you buy comb honey there is a 100% assurance that your honey is “raw”! If the comb honey is surrounded by liquid honey there is a 90% chance that the liquid honey is pasteurized. If the beekeeper has stored raw honey in the comb until just before selling the raw honey, there is a less chance of airborne spores contaminating the raw honey. This is one way that raw honey is sold after the fall harvest. If your beekeeper elects to offer comb honey, please realize what happened in his beehive. It takes over 8 pounds of honey to produce a pound of wax. All comb honey is sold in “new wax”, wax made the same year as the honey. Wax comb is normally reused every year, and will result in more honey to the beekeeper as no honey was used in wax production. These methods of caring for raw honey are deliberate extra work details for the beekeeper. If it is extra work then of course the price per pound of honey will go up. Is the extra money paid for raw honey worth it? Absolutely! The benefit to the body and your good health is the same as eating raw vegetables compared to eating over cooked vegetables. Raw honey has more nutrients, vitamins and enzymes than pasteurized honey.

Processing raw honey is the most expensive feats of processing honey. The honey does not exceed 125°. The viscosity of honey at this temperature does not allow the honey to flow as freely as 150° pasteurized honey. The honey will not flow freely through a commercial filter so the raw honey slowly runs through a strainer allowing pollen and some wax particles to be included in the raw honey. This is not an unhealthy issue but the clarity issue of raw honey will be less than the commercially processed honey. The taste of raw honey is fabulous! The floral nuances are preserved with a smell of freshness. If you get a chance to hug your beekeeper, do so and tell them how much you appreciate the EXTRA they do to bring you RAW HONEY. Your beekeeper can be stung an average of 3 times a day all summer long while plying the beekeeping trade.

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Raw honey is a honey that has not been pasteurized. Gourmet honey is a honey gathered from one source of flowers, processed separately from all other honey and bottled so that the honey can be enjoyed as a gourmet monofloral honey. The first question is usually how do you get the bees to not mix the honey? Honey is gathered from the flowers that are flowing with nectar. All flowers do not produce nectar at the same time of day or the same time of year. The bees naturally store only one kind of honey in each honey cell. It becomes the beekeeper’s chore to know when the flower that is producing gourmet nectar is blooming, and then remove that box of honey when the floral source is finished. This is EXTRA WORK for the beekeeper! This is why each gourmet honey has its own taste, like wine, all honey DOES NOT taste the same.

Raw honey is preferred over pasteurized honey because the raw honey has all its natural enzymes that aid digestion and good health. The reason a beekeeper would not store all his honey as raw honey is the raw honey has airborne spores in it that could in time cause the honey to ferment. The honey would then have to be dumped. Most honey worldwide is cooked to 140° and is no longer a raw honey. This pasteurization of honey allows the sealed honey to be stored at 60° for at least 3 years without spoilage. Honey that crystallizes (turns solid) has not spoiled. All honey will crystallize, but can be returned to the liquid state by warming the glass bottle of honey in warm water not to exceed 125°.

Raw Gourmet Honey is one huge step further than just unpasteurized honey. Keeping the single flower source honey separate from all the other honey that the bees bring into the hive is a vigilant task performed by the beekeeper. Much more time and trips to the apiary are required in addition to labeling stored honey supers at the honey-house before extracting. If the beekeeper was to sell raw gourmet honey for $15 a pound it would still be a wonderful price compared to the costly efforts that went into presenting Gourmet Raw Honey to the consumer!

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