People will often ask questions about the quality and purity of the honey they are buying. This is a good thing, as too much of the food we buy is of rather murky origin.
Is your honey pure?
The UK has strict legislation about what can be called honey, basically if it says “honey” on the jar, it can have had nothing added and nothing taken away from the honey that the bees produced. That’s what you get from your local beekeeper. You might have seen all the coverage in the media about adulterated honey. Much of what is sold in the supermarkets is imported, and there is inadequate traceability back to the hive. We now know that a lot of what is in those jars (and squeezy bottles) is in fact corn syrup, or other cheaper ingredients. If you buy our honey we can tell you which apiary it came from, often even the individual hive (though not the exact bees involved!).
Is your honey raw?
There isn’t an exact definition of what the term “raw” means when it comes to honey, but you are probably trying to find out if it has been pasteurised or generally heated to an extent that its wondrous properties have been damaged. Our honey is gently warmed to make it flow – no more.
Is your honey un-filtered?
This question is really about the size of the filter used. If we didn’t filter honey at all, it would have chunks of wax and bits of bee in it. For most people, that’s taking “natural” a step too far. We filter enough to get the bits out, but use a sufficiently coarse filter that the pollen remains. These small amounts of pollen might well be contributing to the observed ability of honey to help reduce hay-fever – so yes of course we leave them in.
Is your honey organic?
Most organic foods sold in the UK are certified by the Soil Association which has a a strict set of rules. For honey to be claimed to be “organic” a beekeeper would have to be able to prove that their bees foraged only on certified organic land. Since bees can travel up to 3 miles, that would mean having around 28 square miles of land under control. So no, our honey is not organic in that sense. It is totally natural though, if that’s what you mean!
… so to summarise
In the end, the only way to know you are getting 100% pure honey is to buy it from someone local that you trust. Genuine beekeepers will be only too happy to talk about how they look after their bees and how they process their honey.