There is no real definition of raw honey, but it basically means that it is not pasteurized. So what does pasteurization mean? Here is what Emi Higashiyama from Empowered Sustenance says: “When honeybees are at work, their collective body temperature rises and consequently warms their work area – that is, the honey. The temperature of an active hive, therefore, is about 95ºF (35ºC), and the honey is stable and “alive” – or rather, the enzymes in honey that give it the nutritional and beneficial qualities are alive. As long as the temperature of honey does not significantly rise past 95ºF/35ºC, the honey has not been pasteurized.” Anything past 95ºF is pasteurized. But according to Honey Bee Suite, the hive doesn’t stay warm. They believe the cluster (bees) will keep themselves warm, but they don’t try to keep the whole hive warm. Here is what they said: “One beekeeper in France measured the temperatures in his hive when the outside air temperature was 44°F. He measured 95° in the center of the cluster, 71° immediately above the cluster and 52° in other empty portions of the hive. Other beekeepers have found similar temperature gradients.” So according to Honey Bee Suite, honey in a hive, is (depending on where the cluster is) colder than 95°. Sometimes it’s as low as 52°.
There is a mistake a lot of people make. In their desserts, some people in replace of sugar, will use honey. Sometimes, if a recipe calls for cooking or boiling down the sugar, which in their case, honey, they will boil down the honey; most of the time, over 95°. What happens to honey when it is heated over 95°F? It becomes pasteurized and ruins the enzymes in the honey. If you're going to boil down your honey, you might as well buy pasteurized honey. You would be wasting your money if you bought raw honey and boiled it down.
What is the point of buying raw honey? What is the difference between the two? Why don’t people who buy raw honey just buy pasteurized honey? Raw honey is a nutritious food that has many natural vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other essential natural nutrients in it. When you pasteurize honey, it kills all of these healthy nutrients. According to Hive and Honey Apiary, pasteurized honey is almost just as unhealthy as refined sugar. Unfortunately, most people like pasteurized honey because of its looks. Pasteurized honey looks crystal clear, clean looking. Most people have never even heard of raw honey. Some people spend a lot of money on raw honey because they want the minerals that are in raw honey.
Okay, and what is the point of pasteurizing? If it takes all those nutrients out, why do they pasteurize it? Who invented pasteurization? Pasteurization started when they began the new way of raising animals and growing food. For cows, they started putting them in little pens and feeding them GMO corn. The cows became unhealthy and started producing dirty unhealthy milk, thus having to start pasteurizing it. For land, they starting clearing the land with only dirt. Dirt is a living organism and should be covered; whether with sticks, rocks, wood chips, or leaves. When you don’t cover the ground, the dirt loses its minerals and becomes dry. They also began growing the same crop every year on acres of land and spraying it with chemicals, including flowers. For the bees, they spray them with a bee smoker and according to Wikipedia, is filled with chemicals when collecting the honey to calm them down. They also feed them high fructose corn syrup; the bees become unhealthy from all the chemicals and corn syrup and get sick. When they go out to collect pollen, all of the flowers are also filled with chemicals. All of these chemicals make not only the flowers but the bees, sick. When they invented this new way to raise animals, all the milk, honey, etc. that the animals were making, were bad and dirty because the animals were sick. Everyone was becoming sick from eating it so a man named Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization. Pasteurization not only takes out the nutrients, which was not his ultimate goal, but to kill the bacteria. The bad bacteria was the source of the problem that was making everyone sick. So Louis Pasteur decided that he was going to invent a way to take out that bacteria, both good and bad, just to be safe. So that’s when he invented pasteurization.
But if milk, honey, etc. has both good and bad bacteria, isn’t the bad bacteria going to
make you sick if you don’t pasteurize it? Even if the cows are healthy, they’ll still have bad bacteria in them, right? True, everything has good and bad bacteria in it, but so long as the bees, flowers, cows, etc. are healthy, the good bacteria will overpower the bad bacteria. Then you will get the good bacteria that your body needs, plus the nutrients that your body also needs. Have you ever heard that honey helps burns? The reason why is because the good bacteria that is in the honey helps fight the infection. So when you buy pasteurized honey, since there is no bacteria, good or bad, that honey does not help the infection. If anything, it can make the wound worse if it is not 100%. And if it is 100% honey, but still pasteurized? It doesn’t do anything.
So if unpasteurized honey (and all the other foods) are so important, why do they not just take better care of the animals so they don’t have to pasteurize the food? Because it’s cheaper and easier. They started this new method of raising animals and growing crops because they believe it’s cheaper than having to own acres of land for the cattle to graze on, or it’s easier to spray the bees to calm them down because it’s faster than going slower to let the bees move out of the way and to calm down.
So you talked earlier about how high fructose corn syrup makes bees sick, what do you feed them if not high fructose corn syrup? Just corn syrup? Sugar water? Corn syrup is not any better than high fructose corn syrup. Sugar water is better, but it can still make the bees sick. Here is what you should do. Don’t feed them at all. Here is what Mother Earth News says about feeding bees: “Over the years, I’ve discovered that my bees know how to feed themselves and are healthier and more productive when I don’t interfere with their nutrition by feeding them quickly when artificially fed, but then are addicted to feeding. When the beekeeper quits feeding them and the bees must forage on their own, the momentum and any jump on the season are lost.” This shows that bees get lazy when fed and they also are unhealthy. The honey also tastes better in general when they go get their own food. I also recommend that, at least in the winter, you leave a little extra honey so that if the bees can’t find any flowers, they have some honey to feed on.
What if you get honey that isn’t raw? Is it still 100% honey? Even though the bees are probably fed high fructose corn syrup and the honey is heated above 95ºF, is it still 100% honey? Most honey is 100% honey, but according to Food Safety News, most honey isn’t honey. They say that if honey contains absolutely no trace of pollen, the honey isn’t real. It is a sweetener, but it is not honey. Here are some of the brands they mentioned that are not real honey: American Choice Clover Honey, Archer Farms Organic Blossom Honey, Busy Bee Organic Honey, CVS Honey, etc. What do you mean, not real honey? Honey is a sweetener made by bees. It has nutrients in it and should contain at least a little pollen. Even raw honey contains a little pollen. When you heat the honey at a really high heat, it takes out the nutrients and pollen, thus making it a sweetener. No longer honey, just a sweetener that is almost like refined sugar.
Unpasteurized or raw honey does not mean unfiltered honey. Here is what Crystals Raw Honey says about filtered honey: “Filtered honey is honey that has been literally sieved to remove anything suspended or mixed up with the honey. The stuff typically removed includes pollen grains, pieces of beeswax, propolis, air bubbles and even the occasional wing or two of a bee that got caught up in the bee harvesting moment.” Okay, so filtered honey is okay, right? I mean, what’s so special about unfiltered honey? As long as the honey is raw and the bees feed themselves, we’re good. Well, in order to filter honey, you have to heat it up. As I mentioned earlier, honey can still be raw as long as you don’t heat it above 95ºF. But even at 95ºF, honey is still partially cooked. So how do get all the stuff out of the honey if you shouldn’t filter it? You don’t; a bee wing in the honey is actually rare, the pollen grains are good for you, a little piece of beeswax here and there won’t do anything to you, nor will you taste it. I personally think that honey tastes better with the pollen grains still in the honey.
Okay, so honey should be raw, unfiltered, honey and the bees are supposed to go collect their own food. Where do you get honey that meets all these requirements? To go find honey with all those requirements is rare. It is possible but rare. I would say just do the best you can. If you can only find raw honey, then great! Get that! If you can find raw and unfiltered honey, even better! If you can find someone who sells honey that meets all three requirements, awesome!
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