No chemicals, ever! “We do not use any chemicals or any other ‘treatments’ on our bees, hives, or honeycomb. As a result, our honey is 100% pure and uncontaminated. By comparison, most commercial beekeepers routinely use chemicals and antibiotics in their hives to prevent bee diseases. Bees come first “We leave plentiful honey and pollen reserves for the bees in the hive at all times. Good nutrition means healthy and productive bees. We only harvest the real surplus that the bees won’t be able to consume themselves and which, in nature, would be lost to bears, moths, and other honey lovers. So our honey is produced without ‘robbing’ the bees – this is the true surplus that can be extracted without any danger of compromising the bees’ own food stockpiles.”
Raw, never heated It’s all in the placement of the comma. My honey is “raw, never heated,” although “raw never, heated” may be more common today. Heating honey can be convenient during extraction and processing; it also slows crystallization. I’ve seen “raw local honey” on tap at a health food store; it was inside a dispenser with a heating element in it!I use a tangential extractor, and I’m finding it spins honey out very well at room temperature. As for crystallization, I love it – because it’s another indication that my honey has not been heat-processed. Unfiltered I only use a large-cell stainless steel colander to strain the honey. If it was not for the small hive beetles (one thing I don’t want in my honey!) – I might even skip the straining step. The colander I use lets small bits of wax and pollen through, which will float to the top of the jar after bottling. My customers like that – it’s like “cream-on-the-top yogurt.”Heating and forced filtering is largely about preventing crystallization, but I actually encourage that.
