Raw honey - is it just marketing?

[aLptHW4k4y]

I don't have any stomach ache from other acidic foods, e.g., usually first thing in the morning I eat/drink is orange juice (which has much lower ph than honey).
So I don't believe it's the acidity itself for me.

[PaleoPhil]

Sounds like it. I've seen a wide range of honey pH's reported, with some reports as low as 3.0 pH, but that's not much lower than the range for OJ, which I've seen reported as 3.4 - 3.6.

[jessica]

i found this infograph chart thing on facebook of all places
but thought it was interesting that the second indication of "pure" honey is a slight burning in the back of the throat....hhhm...i know someone mentioned that here as a reason they were suspicious of their honey being raw.  i wonder if this is just for pure and regularly extracted methods or if raw honey is different.  i bought some "really raw honey" from the health food store, it came in a small plastic container, maybe two ounces, wasnt really impressed with the flavor, tastes more like the container, but ive also had really raw really fresh local honey before so i may be a snob......

[Dorothy]

Great info Jessica. Thanks.

Top bar hives are so cool - but not practical for industry because you don't steal all the honey and feed them sugar in the winter like regular honey production. You don't use smoke. You don't stress the hive. You just take a little that they don't have trouble making enough more of for their winter food supply.

The shape of the standard hive is just because one of the first dudes to ever raise bees happened to have wood in that size in his shop. For reals! True story. 

Jessica is also totally right about the reasons for hive collapse as the shipping and the pesticides. They came out with a new pesticide that is a neurotoxin that makes it so that the bees can't make it back to their hives. I forgot the name of the chemical - but most bee keepers consider it the cause of colony collapse.

They used the box shape that they do in industry for a very long time with no colony collapse. Top bar is much better for the bees, it's nicer to let the bees make their own shapes, but it's not really that big of a deal for the bees to follow the contours of the boxes. That's not the kind of stress that would make it so that they couldn't find their way back to their hives! Also, bees are amazing creatures and they are capable of reducing hive temperatures even in the sun - takes more energy to flap so hard probably - but a healthy hive can do it.

The great things about top bar hives ideology is that they are the natural ways bees would make their hives in the shapes they like.

No killing of drones.

No adding sugar.

No taking more than you should.

No messing with the bees more than you should.

No breeding of queens and replacing them. That's such a weird practice. Nowadays they take out queens and kill them and make their own queens in laboratories. That might be one of the things that could be destroying the bees. It's so weird. So stressful - just bizarre - makes no sense.

Btw - in terms of heat - here in Texas even the raw honey's are not raw because when it's so hot outside as soon as the honey is extracted even if no heat is added because the bees are not flapping their wings to keep the temps down the honey is going to be heated just because it's so darn hot outside.

I've determined that I won't buy any honey until after an extraction happens when the outdoor temperatures are low enough. That might not be until February - and therefore I might have to wait until spring to be really sure it was the stuff harvested when it was cooler outside.

It's actually easier to buy honey from a northern supplier when it comes to thinking about heat - but even with that just shipping here in hot trucks - buying before winter or spring it's unlikely that I will get unheated honey no matter how it is harvested or packaged.

I've been wanting a top bar hive for so very long. We'll build it and smear some honey in it and just attract some bees to it. Build it and they will come.   Do your part to save the bees and build a top bar hive!

Here's the really great guy that started all "the buzz" on top bar hives. He has plans for top bar hives to build. The book isn't much more than what's on the website btw.

http://www.biobees.com/

[PaleoPhil]

I did most of the chart tests on Really Raw fermented honey and Wedderspoon 100% Raw Wild Dandelion honey. They both passed, except that, for me, I don't get the burning throat sensation from truly raw honeys, whereas I do get it from cheap supermarket honeys, and many raw honeys (such as these) are too thick by the time they are sold to "trickle," and the best honeys I've tried do partially dissolve in water, but my guess is the chart means they don't fully dissolve.

No breeding of queens and replacing them. That's such a weird practice. Nowadays they take out queens and kill them and make their own queens in laboratories.

One Vermont beekeeper got tired of his bees getting killed by parasites, despite the pesticides, so he stopped using them and many bees died off, but the survivors are much more hearty and resistant to the parasites and don't need pesticides. So no he specializes in raising and selling hearty queens to other beekeepers.

here in Texas even the raw honey's are not raw because when it's so hot outside

So it gets hotter than the max temp that is considered "unheated" for honey (92-93 degrees F per Aajonus and Rawesome) during honey-colleting time, right? I wonder if any of the Texas beekeepers try to keep the honey raw by collecting it in the early morning on cooler days or something?

[Dorothy]

One Vermont beekeeper got tired of his bees getting killed by parasites, despite the pesticides, so he stopped using them and many bees died off, but the survivors are much more hearty and resistant to the parasites and don't need pesticides. So no he specializes in raising and selling hearty queens to other beekeepers.

   Good man helps the bees!

So it gets hotter than the max temp that is considered "unheated" for honey (92-93 degrees F per Aajonus and Rawesome) during honey-colleting time, right? I wonder if any of the Texas beekeepers try to keep the honey raw by collecting it in the early morning on cooler days or something?

They think it's a blessing to collect when it's hot because the honey flows so well.    The "cool" times of the morning are just a couple of hours and there are is no such thing as a cool day until pretty much winter. Brian went outside today in the early morning and was thinking how cool it was - like it was becoming fall. He looked at the thermometer and it was a freezing 82 degrees in the shade.

I buy really raw honey this time of year - but still - I doubt it is raw by the time it gets to the store. I just think it will be still lower heated than the honeys in Texas where temperatures in the sun can get up to 140. People here don't understand that when they are buying raw honey this time of year, sure it isn't heating by the producers - they don't need to heat it because all the heat is provided by nature.

One thing people don't realize is that when you take the temperature in the shade it can be radically different than the temperature in the sun. If the product is not kept in the shade or carried through a large field in full sun - the temperature can get really high.

[jessica]

12/13 degree variance between shade and sun if i remember correctly, but thats full shade and full sun..and any and all degrees between. 

i thought the same about harvesting when warm out, but i would think the bees would more likely be in the comb at this time helping to keep the internal temp down so the larvae and queen would stay cool, and the comb itself.  also i think nectar flows best in cooler temperatures especially right after a rain so bees would more likely be out collecting and it would be easier to keep em out of the hive? too much speculation on all of our parts i guess

[Dorothy]

12/13 degree variance between shade and sun if i remember correctly, but thats full shade and full sun..and any and all degrees between. 

I know this isn't true in Florida and Texas because I've measure the temps in the shade an the sun myself and they can be widely different. There is often more than a 50 degree difference.

I've made these measurements lots of times because after moving to the south I continually get weirded out about how different I can feel in the shade versus in the sun.

I think those numbers would be true up in most sane places to live.