What is Raw Honey?

With all the talks about raw honey, do you ever wonder what exactly is raw honey?

A few years ago my grandfather told me the greatest way (in my opinion) to explain raw honey.

“Imagine you walk out to your garden and harvest some fresh green beans, if you chose to eat the green beans straight like that, with no boiling/steaming/cooking - just straight raw green bean. You will enjoy all of the nutrients that a green bean has to offer. But if you steam/boil the green beans, they are still good for you but you steamed out a bunch of the nutrients and enzymes.” -Kevin Dresser

Now raw honey is the same theory. When the honey is harvested, slightly filtered (to get the big chunks of wax and such out), and jarred up - that is the pure raw honey, with all the nutrients and enzymes right in there.

When you heat honey just enough to filter out all of the impurities (un-pasteurized), you still heat out some of the nutrients.

The OBA (Ontario Beekeepers Association) refers to raw honey as;

“Raw honey is minimally filtered, so as not to destroy the healthy enzymes and other nutrients. Unlike the translucent, golden honey you find in the grocery store, raw honey is solid at room temperature and looks almost milky. That opaque quality means that the honey still contains bee pollen granules, bee propolis (tree sap), vitamins, minerals and enzymes.”

Different bee keepers have different ways of labelling there honey to let you know if it’s raw. Here at Dresser’s Purest Honey, we add a yellow circle (dot) sticker. So if you see a yellow circle/dot sticker on one of our containers of honey, that indicates that it’s raw!